Best present ever. Worst present Ever.

It’s Christmas-time, which means it’s time to buy a lot of stuff no one really needs. Unless you’re buying angry bees, which is always a good idea. But maybe you’re stuck for ideas for awesome presents for people you love, or for horrible presents for people you resent and so I thought I’d share with you two of the best and worst presents ever.

Best present ever: Christmas at our house is sort of weird because Victor is a bit unintentionally Grinchy, and Hailey and I are the kind of people who want to dress up in Victorian clothes and go caroling every night. It’s a strange dynamic, so two years ago I decided to buy burp guns for all three of us, which I hid under the couches for after Christmas was winding down and we were feeling a bit blah. Then I told Hailey and Victor to look under their seats and they each found fully-loaded guns filled with ping-pong balls. It was like I was Oprah, but instead of giving away cars I’d taped guns under their chairs like they were imprisoned mobsters. I was slaughtered because I have very bad aim but I was comforted by the sound of Hailey and Victor both laughing and screaming hysterically as they ran all over the house in full battle-mode, with the cats all wildly skittering after dozens of bouncing ping-pong balls. It was insane and possibly as good as Christmas gets.

Worst present ever: During a long stretch in high school when everything I wore was black and gothy and emo, my (estranged) grandfather gave me a pink children’s sweater from K-mart. It was a size kid’s 6X and might have fit over my left calf if I was into one-legged, pink, leg warmers with sleeves. Luckily, he left the top of the tag attached so I was able to take it back to K-mart, where (after waiting in line for an hour) the lady at Returns told me that the original price of the sweater was 89 cents. I took the voucher and traded it in for kitty litter, which I had to pay an extra dollar for myself to make up the difference. So that’s my worst present ever. Owing a dollar for kitty litter.

PS. This present is not why we’re estranged. We’re estranged because of an (alleged) incident so bizarre and outlandish that no one ever believes it and I have to call my mom to confirm it. It’s sort of a long story and probably one I can’t legally tell until everyone is dead. Look for it in book #3: “Everyone is Dead Now.” It’s gonna be hilarious.

Worst present ever, after a freshman year of college spent exploring the depth of bulimia and self-loathing, I was gifted a raincoat that was sized to fit a rhino, the body dysmorphia hysterics that ensued were unforgettable.

Best Present Ever: A gift certificate to a book store. Seriously. I ask for that every damn year and no one ever gives me one. I mean come on, I READ FOR A LIVING. You would think I would get nothing but those. Anyway, my MIL gave me one and I about cried. Finally, someone listened to me.

Worst Present Ever: A tube of used lipstick and 2 chipped candle holders from a former good friend. Yes, I’m shallow enough to drop a friend for giving me used lipstick.

Best present ever: Kindle Fire my husband totally surprised me with 2 Christmases ago. I didn’t ask for it, but couldn’t live without it now.

Worst present ever: God-awful teddy bear sweater my mom gave me in 8th grade. Because, what 8th grader’s life isn’t complete without a horrible boucle sweater with a teddy bear face on it?? I actually have a photo of me holding it up with a forced smile. Oh memories….

I think that I was a younger child (about 8) and I got a tiny skateboard. When you’re 8, any skateboard is awesome. A couple years later we ended up moving to Germany and where we lived had this fabulously steep and long-ish road with the obligatory curb at the end. Let’s just say I didn’t quite make it to the curb. It’s amazing how much speed you can pick up on a 3 year old skateboard that measures 13 inches. I think the 13 inch measurement should have been a clue. It’s amazing how much damage is caused when said skateboard at rocket speeds decides to hit a rock and suddenly decelerates while my body continues to move forward. Lots and lots of scabs….so that would be the best present.

Worst…two of the most awful ties I have ever seen. Their only redeeming value came in their ability to become a tourniquet for my ex-wife when she was dealing with migraines. She used them to apply proper pressure to her head in hopes of alleviating the pain.

Best: Getting a hard cover version of The Lost World from my father and step-mother. Worst: My step-mother wanted to borrow and read the book she just gave me after I was done. I read it gave it to her and all was good. Until I asked for it back and my step-mother claimed it was her book. I said I got it from you for Christmas and she said no you didn’t. I stopped the conversation I mean what are you supposed to say?

Best Present Ever: A CD player Walkman that my grandmother gave me. It worked for YEARS until one day I dropped it on her cement basement floor and it finally stopped working. Another great present, also from my grandmother was an interchangeable knitting needle set which I still use pretty much daily.

Worst Present Ever: A pair of jeans that didn’t fit and were decidedly “not cool” which I also received in my goth/angsty stage. Highwaisted jeans should never be worn by anyone outside of moms in the 1980s.

Best Present: the earrings my boyfriend got me last year. I developed an allergy to cheap metals, and I LOVED wearing all sorts of crazy earrings every day, and then suddenly I couldn’t without my ears bleeding. He knew I was upset about this and went and got me white gold studs. This was the first present to make me cry from happiness.
Worst Present: every year my grandmother complains about having to get the rest of family presents, even though she is probably the main reason why the QVC channel is still up and running. The presents? Spare change taped to a card.

Not quite a present, but every year I make my brother deal with something tricksy before he gets his gift which includes things such as finding a series of cards that eventually lead him out to the barn and my mom’s horse trailer where the gift is located, completely covering his gift in packing tape (he chewed that one open), hiding his gift in a full and resealed box of dog bones, or sending him on a World of Warcraft style quest called “It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like Fish Sticks” where he had to collect “Red Snapper” hidden around the house before he could receive his “Strange Sounding Bag.”

Best present ever: The tiny closet full of handmade underwear for my Barbies when I was 5. It was all made by my mom’s friend, our neighbor, who was a seamstress. I didn’t have a Barbie car or house or horse or even a Ken; but my Barbies had quite the trousseau. In retrospect, I guess that’s weird in many ways. But at the time, I was thrilled.

They are one and the same thing and for you to understand I need to set the scene for you.

My MIL and her late 2nd husband are what one might call old fashioned. My MIL seems to be oblivious to a lot of the world, or at least the bit where slang terms originate from. I can not say I possess that quality myself and I have taken much delight in the past from being very naughty whilst in her home and using some phrases that may or may not have a double meaning… so far I haven’t been caught by anyone other than my BIL who quietly smirked whilst sitting on the sofa and indeed joined in with this new game.

Now the year before last we went round to her home early on Christmas morning, (she goes to Church for the Christmas Day Morning Service and so we need to be there pre 8:30am). It isn’t a pretty sight. I need breakfast and some time to wake up so I can be on top form mentally to think up my double entendres and the such and at 8:30am on Christmas Day I am still thinking about sugar plums dancing because I normally end up staying up to 2am on Christmas Eve trying to catch Santa/wrap the last of the gifts that Santa leaves.

So we were handing out gifts and I was sitting on the sofa in the corner trying to smile away the hangover “without-having-drunk-any-alcohol” feeling I had. My MIL then handed me my gift and I unwrapped it whilst wondering what delights were in store for me this year.

Inside was an apron. The apron had a picture of a topiary tree on it and the phrase “Keep your bush neat and tidy” and it was positioned in such a way that the Double entendre of the phrase was quite obvious.

I laughed. I thought that it was funny. Although I did want to know why my garden was being questioned by my MIL and an apron.

My MIL looked at me with a look of relief.

“I’m glad that you think it is funny, I was worried you would be offended!” she offered
“No I think it is funny!” I said passing the apron to Daddy and thinking my little game would have to stop.

It was two days later that Daddy got a text message from his Mother, asking him to apologise to me on her behalf. She had just found out what the apron meant from her husband. She had given the aprons to about twenty people including most the old ladies at Church ROFL.

Best present ever: Dad built me a sled and we went to visit the Grandparents where they have actual *snow* (like feets of it). They lived on a giant wheat farm so in the winter it was just acres and acres of snow filled playground goodness. To top it off, they had an ATV (one of the original unsafe 3wheeler kinds) and my dad hooked the sled up to that. ZOOM! We’d go flying down the field with me hanging on for DEAR LIFE on the sled, laughing insanely, of course, until I’d inevitably fall off. He’d come back to get me and we’d do it again until we froze.

Worst present: Also involving clothes and Grandparents. When I was in about 8th grade my grandmother bought me a lime green bell-bottomed polyester suit. OMFG. I said my polite thanks and tried to squirrel it away, but Dad *insisted* (with threats) I try it on. I wish I could have just died. THANKFULLY it was too small but they didn’t believe me until I came out to show them(and see through, GREAT, just want a 13 year old wants to model in front of her family). The good that came out of that is Dad told the grandparents to never buy me clothes again. WHEW.

Worst? I was 16. I had asked for a skateboard when I was 11. My mom finally got around to getting it for me, 5 years later. WTF, Mom? It was LONG after I wasn’t into the idea of skateboards anymore, and it was this hideous cheap thing made of greyish multicolored swirly plastic, as if the skateboard manufacturer had a bunch of plastic left over at 5 pm and just mixed it all together to squeeze one last skateboard from the batch.

My mom also got me a singing clown with a balloon bouquet on my 21st. She should really just stick to gift cards.

Best? My sweet BF Curt took me shopping at a little local boutique store and I got some outfits I felt gorgeous in. It was so thoughtful and kind.

Best present ever? My beloved Cabbage Patch Doll from 1980-whatever, when everyone went nuts trying to find one.
Worst present ever? A kids sized tank top, with one of the straps cut (likely from wrapping) from my great aunt who, not thanks to the gift, also ended up estranged from my family.

Best present ever – a coupon book from my husband for things like “earth-shattering orgasm.” And he delivered.

Worst present ever? I asked for a camera and got a blender. From my mother. And I am NOT someone who would ever use a blender. (Actually have the thing virtually brand new in my kitchen cabinets and it’s nearly 40 years old.)

My grandmother is the queen of bad presents. Last week she gave my 5 year son a computer disc of “Babe – the game”. The requirements are Windows 3.1 and at least 8K of RAM..We don’t have any computers that are old enough to play it. She bought it at a church garage sale for 21 cents and thought she was getting a good deal.

My best present was a trip from my kids to the BC coast alone. It was the most relaxing 3 days I’ve ever had.

Worst present ever: I actually don’t have a specific present… just 1 christmas where I figured my mom knew me enough that I didn’t have to write up a list. I ended up with 0 things I liked that year, and a bunch of stuff that went to the back of the closet.

Best present ever: I don’t think I have one for this either! I think I’m better at getting other people presents, then getting stuff for myself. Got my mom a bathrobe once when she was going through a hard time, and it was super soft & warm, became her security blanket and helped her through that bad time.

Worse Present Ever: A bright red laundry bucket shaped like an old-fashioned trash can. I was around 8, it was from my grandmother, and I almost cried.

Best Present Ever: Inside the laundry bucket was a doll she’d hand made for me. I still have it. It was dressed like a bride, and lives in a nice box with the little ring pillow and sprig of lavender she included with it. (I’m 31 now, and that doll has gone with me everywhere.)

Best Present:
When I was 15, I had bought the entire collection of The Crow graphic novels (yeah, I was that girl in high school). I then lent them to some guy, probably because I thought he was cute. Of COURSE I never saw him again, and with him went my precious novels. 10 years later, I would tell that story to my boyfriend (now husband). Lo and behold, Christmas Eve comes along and this wonderful man had found the entire collection (not mine, mind you, but another set) of the graphic novels. I already knew I would spend the rest of my life with him, this just confirmed it even more.

Worst Present:
When I was 17, we spent Christmas with my mom’s side of the family. My aunt gave my sister and I… beach towels. Now, it’s summer for Christmas in Chile so we were like, “Well, I guess it’s gonna come in handy for vacation, thanks…” Cut to my grandma’s present and it was, you guessed it, beach towels. “Gee… thanks, grandma…” Now, it wouldn’t have been SO bad if my cousin wouldn’t have come running in saying “You guys! Look at the silver bracelet grandma gave me!” My sister and I were livid and from that day on, it was dubbed “The Beach Towel Christmas.”

I can’t remember a worst gift or best gift ever… I guess my best “gift” would be dating my husband started on the 26th of December because I wrapped up a garbage can he have to his mom for Christmas (honestly she wanted that!).

I don’t like opening gifts, I only like to see people open them. Ooh, maybe I can’t think of a worst gift because my mother repeatedly gives me bad gifts every year. Tacky clothes, the furry vibrating foot “massager” that really just makes your ties curl from tickling, the Chewbaca coffee mug, etc.

Worst gift ever: A .22 rifle given to me by a boyfriend who had a penchant for cheating. And being a moron.
Best gift ever: An angel for the Christmas tree made with paper and a toilet paper tube, drawn by my son when he was about 13. Because he was 13, and he knew I would love it, even though he felt stupid as hell doing it.

Worse present: My new husband bought me a giant TV, when I don’t really watch TV and he is obsessed with it. He still doesn’t understand…….
Best present: beer of the month club. Pretty much universally agreed that this would be the best present for anyone on your shopping list (no financial interest, just like to drink a lot).

Best Present: As a child, I always opened my presents smallest to biggest. So when I was 6, I was really really really wanting a Barbie Mansion. I got to the last box, the biggest box, expecting this mansion, and inside of it was a purple fluppy dog. I have no idea why my mom stuck the small stuffed animal in such a big box, but whatever. Disappointment for Christmas. That dog went into the closet of toys for a few months, and then one night I was scared to go to sleep, so I reached in the closet for any stuffed animal, grabbed that dog, and I slept with it every night since then up until I joined the military and had kids. I still have that dog, and the kids make it talk and sing like I used to.

Worst Present: I can’t think of a good story like your pink sweater, but I can tell you it’s a cross between getting one of those dollar barbie dolls that looked abnormal from the Uncle I never see except on Christmas, or last year, after having our Christmas gift stash stolen from twice, I got the stomach flu and spent Christmas Eve vomiting into dehydration, early Christmas morning in the ER followed by putting gifts under the tree sick as a dog, and then Christmas day sleeping while the kids opened every box and lost parts and ruined all the toys before actually playing with them correctly. I just threw away an easy bake oven and a sewing machine that was never used, but was full of pennies.

Worst present: pajamas from my stepmother that were simultaneously too short (I’m tall) and too large.
Best present: my husband had sacrificed getting any presents from my dad’s family for Christmas or his birthday so that I could get a contact lens exam & contacts. I was pretty damn blind, plus had an astigmatism so the exam itself was almost $200 & the contacts were $300. We were a military family and broke as hell. It was like the Gift of the Magi, only I hadn’t given anything up.

Worst: My grandmother (who’s eyesight was failing) knitted me a scarf. It was 8 feet long started out about a foot and a half wide and ended in some bizarre point. It was pink and brown and blue and yellow and and and …. She used all her yarn scraps. She’s gone, but I still have the scarf. Someday someone cleaning out my house after I am gone is going to say WTF????

Best present ever: I was roughly 8 years old and received those ‘Quints’ toys from years ago. I almost died from joy.

worst present ever: my mom got me a metal dress form for some reason 2 years ago. I don’t make clothes, I don’t know how to sew and I am the opposite of crafty. She SWEARS i asked for it (i have no recollection of this, I think she was dreaming) and so I said ‘Well, I will just attach a taxidermied raven head to the top of it and call it a day’. She doesn’t think I’m right in the head. Actually, now I don’t know if that was the worst present after all.

Best: Age 40 – Gift certificate from my daughter for us to have professional photos taken together. It was since I lost weight. 🙂 She paid $100, borrowing some of my money and the rest in $1 bills crunched up. I didn’t know what it was for until I opened it. Cried…..I love those photos. She made me feel loved and beautiful (still had/have 25 lbs to lose).

Best Present Ever: A PONY! An honest-to-God, stocky and hairy (but adorable) liver chestnut and white Shetland pony gelding named “Jethro.” He was as curmudgeonly as it was possible to be, and had a whinny like a goat due to partially paralyzed vocal cords, but I adored him.

Worst Present Ever: A PONY! Only in the terms that it started me on a lifelong love affair with horses that has consumed me and cost more than a small fortune. But they’re worth it.

Best: Husband bought us kayaks a few years ago. We went from being sit-at-homers to being adventurers. Changed our lives. Improved our marriage. Renewed other interests, like travel and photography. I highly recommend it of you live near any body of water.

Worst: My brother found an old Disney Aladdin figurine in my grandmother’s garage, and for some reason decises to wrap it up and give it to me. I have no idea why. This wasn’t during childhood. This was last year. We’re in our 30s. (He got me a ‘real’ present, too.)

Worst present: My wonderful Nana gave me a training bra and underwear when I was around 11 or 12 (I was mortified and it was awful). What really made it the worst present was that at that time, my family would tell you to “show everyone” what you got. It was my grandparents, my parents, my aunt and uncle, my brother, and my male cousin. I wanted to crawl into the floor and die.

Best present: In 1988, my parents got me the My Little Pony “Pony Paradise”. Not only that, they stayed up until 4 AM putting together my Pony Paradise, my full-length mirror, and my brother’s race-car track. We got up at 4:30. When I went downstairs to get our stockings, I stood in the doorway for a good 5 minutes with my mouth open, staring at the wonderland underneath the tree that Santa had brought.

Best Present Ever AND Worst All in One- a standing globe. I was 10 or 11 and my father decided that I needed a globe. So I could be all geographically smart and stuff. Problem is that it comes in a box about the size of a small 10 or 11 year old. So, giant box all wrapped up with my name on it. My imagination runs wild with incomplete awesomeness. Christmas morning, I go to open my presents and I don’t even wake up my parents. I never did that- I always waited or slept in so they were up but not that year! And the deflation on opening that fucker…
It’s still the best because it was a story I got to retell a gazillion (and now a gazillion and one) and later I returned the favor when I bought my dad a light up globe.

Best present ever:
All my best presents happened when I believed in Santa… I was naive enough to ask for simple things like: a red book one year..seriously just a red book.. but what got me every time was how meticulously Santa had listened to my every request…until I started whispering them in my head. Things got tricky and downhill after that.

Worst present ever:
Okay I didn’t get this. But I was a witness to it. This man recycled his son’s previous year’s birthday card, changed the date and gifted to him again next year. Hey, I’m all for environment friendliness but did I mention that was the only thing he gave his son for his birthday?

Best gift: I’ve had a lot, but I’d have to say a four-wheel ATV. I was twelve. What 12-year-old wouldn’t love that?
Worst gift: I actually can’t think of one. It’s probably an ugly sweater that some older relative bought me.
Thank goodness I have a terrible memory.

Worst – pretty much anything my husband has bought me over the past 33 years. He is truly gift-giving impaired and our adult sons inherited the gene. They have all been asked kindly to stop. If it’s the thought that counts, what the ~hell~ are they thinking?

Best – truthfully I was just thinking of this the other day. The Christmas gift that made me the happiest was a clock radio I received when I was 17. So very unexpected and so appreciated. I had it with me for at least 20 years.

Worst present ever: dengue fever. Thanks mosquito.
Runner up: pair of jeans and a sweater in a garbage bag. People get divorced for a reason.
Best present ever: Horse skull that my husband found. People also get remarried for a reason.

Best Gift: I was 10 and ALL I wanted was a Cabbage Patch kid (this was the year they took the world by storm!) They were unavailable in New England and both my Gram & my favorite Uncle had friends in Florida get them and send them up for them (not knowing the other had done it!) So on Christmas day I opened not one but TWO cabbage patch kids! I was THRILLED!!! & I was the only one of my friends who had managed to get one! (SCORE against the catty girls who thought they were better than me cause I was the only kid in my grade with divorced parents)

Worst Gift: When I was about 20 my family decided to do a “pick a name” gift exchange for the adults since there were so many of us. The thought was each person would get a really good gift instead of a bunch of cheap things since we couldn’t really afford it. So, being a poor college student, I scrimped and saved to get my person a really good gift and my gift was a USED purse (that I had seen my aunt using for the past year) & 3 pairs of socks. Needless to say I was PISSED! This went on for about 10 years and everyone hated when that specific person go their name. I struck out 2 more times and got a $10 gift card for a book store (which was awesome because YAY bookstore! but shitty cause really $10??? mind you most of the gifts exchanged were about $100) and then the last year and what finally BROKE the whole system was a regifted sweater (size SMALL – I am & was always a plus sized woman so this would NEVER have fit me) that my Mom had given my cousin (the Aunt’s daughter) for her birthday the month before.
I LOVE your gun idea- we go crazy with nerf in our house during stressful times! 🙂

Best present was probably my grandpa covering the price of my airline tickets for a trip I had been saving up for all year. I literally only spent money on my medicine each month and bus tickets, everything else went into saving for that trip. I was still running short, so him paying for my flight was the only reason I could afford to go in the end.

Worst gift? Some weird bouncy ball that flashed lights super fast. I’m epileptic, I think you can see my problem here. Received this from my step dad’s parents.

Best present ever: My boyfriend (now husband) bought me a necklace he had seen me tear a picture of out of a magazine. Several years prior. He’d been looking for it ever since and finally found it. Not a coincidence I married him.

Worst. Present. Ever.: This isn’t a Christmas gift, but the worst present I ever got, period, was a rusty used kaliedescope from my aunt. When I was a child in the hospital recovering from EYE SURGERY.

Ah…. Christmas that magical time of the year where the house is filled with cigarette smoke and anger and everyone screams and bickers until dishes get broken and doors get slammed. That’s the first thing that comes to my mind when people mention Christmas. So take that, Norman Rockwell!

Best Christmas evah: I was 4 or 5 and deathly ill (asthmatic living in a house of smokers) so people actually were nice around me and I didn’t have to participate in family doings. I got a jewelry music box with a ballerina that twirled. I was so tickled with it. As a bonus I got a large white stuffed kitty too (stuffed animal, not the kind your parents would give you). As a young adult Santa bought me new tires for my car one year. That was a darn good present too. As an adult my best present would have to be this year when I bought the bookshelves I have coveted for years and years and replaced the bookshelves I inherited from the aforementioned family that made me think of them every time I saw them.

Worse present ever: two wadded up twenty dollar bills and a note “go buy it yourself.” This was after how I explained the international ordering of said product was really difficult, you had to figure out the exchange rate and mail in some payment thing from the post office and call them the same day that it was wired and I didn’t want to do all that but it would be awesome gift is someone else were to do it for me. Pfft!

Best: Hoodie from my favorite concert venue. My previous one was stolen and they never had them in stock. My husband watched, badgered and pleaded with them all year until finally they brought them back in stock. It was wonderful.

Wost: Pedometer from my husbands rotten great aunt. Because I was “way too heavy, dear.” Yeah, we don’t see her anymore.

Best: I started to learn to sew as a child and my Mother picked out and hand stocked a sewing basket – with all of the trimmings, thread of all colors, new fabric, scissors, ribbon, etc. The irony is that she HATED sewing – but did not want me to suffer because of it. I still remember how wonderful it was she took the time to make that for me.

Worst: A Bible (fine) from my estranged grandparents. Addressed to one of my other cousins. That they liked better.

Best present ever: My mom knows I love Harry Potter even though she hates it because WITCHES but she heard on the radio randomly one day that this new book was going to be “the new harry potter” so she bought it for me. Of course it wasn’t, the book was terrible, but it’s one of my favorite things in the entire world because it was just a random present she bought for me because she was thinking about things that I liked.

Worst present ever: My grandmother announced she would no longer be giving me presents for anything because I had not sent her a thank you card the previous year. I was seven.

Best. Present. Ever. My uncle (an incredibly funny and talented writer) wrote and published a novel chronicling my grandmother’s 100 years on this earth. It was a beautiful, informative and hilarious piece of work that I cherish to this day.

Worst. Present. Ever. MIL gave me a Céline Dion perfume gift pack because she “remembered” how much I love Céline Dion (we’d had MULTIPLE discussions about how it would be a very cold day in hell before I’d see CD’s show when in Vegas) and how much I enjoyed wearing perfume (I’ve been HORRIBLY allergic since before I even knew MIL and have NEVER worn it in the twenty years we’ve known each other). She was thrilled with how I “loved” the gift, and gave me the same thing the very next Christmas.

Best: A little ugly bunny statue. She is wearing a hat, has a lovely purple scarf, and has a place of honor on the mantle. It was the first gift my daughter bought for me, with no one else knowing. She was 6 and kept it a secret until Christmas.
Worst: My new boyfriend bought me a George Forman knock off grill. It was our first Christmas together. We’ve been married 7 years now. He’s a lucky boy!

Worst Present Ever: A bouncy ball from my grandmother. She had forgotten to get me a Christmas present and stopped at the gas station and bought a bouncy ball from one of those coin machines. Not only was I 16 at the time, but she only had one child and two grandchildren and she forgot about me.

Best Present Ever: A sewing machine. It was kind of random (my dad bought it because I had taken sewing as an elective twice that year in HS so he thought I was “into” sewing) but I ended up taking up sewing and quilting because of it. It still works perfectly 15 years later!

Best present EVER – Molasses. I know that sounds strange but there is an old lady in Crabtree Arkansas that makes her own molasses every year. She sells the extras from her front yard. First come first serve. She makes the best molasses I have ever eaten. Last year my husband managed to snag two quart size jars for me. He wrapped them and put them under the Christmas tree. The contents of that box boggled my mind as you probably know, two quarts of molasses is quite heavy.
Worst present EVER – AS a child my mother sewed most of our clothes. One year she had a brilliant idea. She made my brother and I matching outfits with 3″ red, white and blue polka dots. Yes, I looked like my brother while little old ladies proclaimed “How Cute!” whilst pinching my cheeks. Thanks Mom.

They are the same gift. The year my husband and I moved in together, he got me an electric dartboard. I had never played darts in my life, nor had I expressed any interest in learning. And it was a really expensive gift, so I didn’t get anything else. We had just moved in together and I was pretty sure we were going to get married, and clearly he was the worst gift-giver on the planet. Insert existential crisis.

It also turned out to be the best gift ever because when our nine-year-old was a baby, there was a bar across the street with a bunch of dartboards. We were so tired and so broke that when my parents came to visit, we’d walk across the street for a few hours and play darts and drink cheap drinks. I actually am now not bad at darts and realize it’s fun to throw sharp things. Except I lost the cord to the electronic dartboard, which I still have, so it doesn’t work.

Best Present Ever: Snow on the first Christmas after my daddy died. I am convinced he sent us a white Christmas. We cried a lot that year, but there was a foot of snow on the ground, and the thought of Daddy smiling at us while we threw snowballs and made a snowman and tried to “be of good cheer” made it a little more bearable.

Worst Present Ever: No present. Not a single gift that I didn’t plan for, purchase, and wrap for myself – my ex was a bit of a douchecanoe when it came to gift giving at the holidays.

Best-The entire Little House series, hidden all through the living room, including in the basket of a brand-new 3 speed bicycle. Yay, Mom!
Worst- A badminton game. We had just moved. To the country. The nearest house was two miles away and there were no kids my age. I had no friends. My life was spiraling into hell (that will be in book #3, too) and I kept that badminton set for years, unopened, unopened and felt bad every time I saw it. Mom said, “But you loved playing badminton with the girls next door.” “Yes, but there are no girls next door now, and I don’t think I can train deer and squirrels to play.” That was a fail, Mom.

Worst: A Jesus penis (please don’t ask) as a gag gift. I hid it in a closet for months (like Jesus didn’t really know) before I finally sent it to the ol’ dumpster in the sky.
Best: A trip to the Erma Bombeck Writer’s Conference.

Best: Last year my husband bought me an antique Remington portable typewriter (still in its case) exactly like the one my grandmother taught me to type on when I was a kid.

Worst: Pastel blue crew-neck sweater with an “L” encircled in a wreath of flowers embroidered right between the boobs. My sister got a matching one one with an “S” in pastel pink. We were 16 and 22 years old, respectively. My father was clueless. At least he got our initials right.

Best? Maybe this one. We’re headed to London for 11 days. The hubs and me. All his idea. I dig him.

Worst? Maybe not a gift. Maybe it was when I walked out on Christmas morning and there was NO SANTA. My dad was sitting in his recliner, shirt off, smoking a cigarette. He asked what I was doing as I sat on the ottoman, staring at the abyss that was the NO SANTA. “Oh, just admiring the tree,” was my teary reply. “OH SHIT – go to bed!” was his beautiful reaction.

Best present: An ugly little bunny statue. She is wearing a big sun hat, has a lovely purple scarf, and has a place of honor on our mantle. It as the fist gift my daughter ever bought me with no one knowing. She was 6, and kept it a surprise until Christmas.

Worst gift: my new boyfriend, on our first Christmas, bought me a George foreman knock off grill. We’ve been married now nearly 8 years. He’s a lucky boy!

Best present ever: My boyfriend gave me a first addition of a book of poetry by my favorite author once. That was lovely.

Worst present ever: Three Christmases/Birthdays ago (my B-day is 3 days after Christmas) my childhood dog passed. He was very old and sick, and it was his time. However, having it happen two weeks before Christmas was pretty hard. On top of that, my folks were in some dire financial straights, so we decided not to do presents that year. …Except that three days later–on my birthday–they got themselves a new dog. So…they got themselves a dog for my birthday.

It just stung with the recent death, and the decision that gifts couldn’t happen for either events that year. 😦

Best Gift: Anything my grandmother gave me, ever. But mostly the old “Heidi” book, complete with pictures from the Shirley Temple movie. (She taught me to read before Kindergarten. The woman is awesome personified.)

Worst Gift: My MIL makes everyone open their gifts one at a time so everyone can admire. She invites my husband ex-wife to Christmas every year. She got us the same outfits. Hers was a 4. Mine was a 14.
*Note: My husband was married to the ex for 6 months at the age of 18. We’ve been together 22 years now.
p.s. We no longer go to Christmas at his mother’s.
p.p.s. I’m a 14 now. Back then I was an 8. (Bitch)

Best: My husband bought me tickets to see Disney on Ice during our first Christmas as a married couple! He’s been great over the years when it comes to Christmas. Some of his top ones have been a Buffy replica stake, a terabyte external hard drive, and one year he bought me 12 books in a series I was reading.

Worst: My aunts are awesome women, but they suck at presents. One of my aunts found out that I hated Barney the Dinosaur as a kid, so she proceeded to send me Barney related gifts for like seven years, ending in a giant fucking portrait of herself standing next to Barney. My other aunt bought me a watch every single year for about five years (despite me constantly saying how I hated wearing watches and bracelets) but she really topped out one year when she bought me my first bra and had me open it as a Christmas gift when I was eleven, in front of the whole family, and on camera.

Ugh. My husband’s worst present (given to him)..a bracelet. Made of embroidery thread. By an adult woman who said it was maid during the full moon so it had good stuff in it. Yeah, we are a bunch of heathens, but ack-I don’t really think she even tried on that one.

Best present – Super Nintendo. We weren’t the type of family who got trendy things often, so this was huge. What was funny was that our dad played it more than my sister and I did; he was addicted to Paperboy.

Worst gift – Can’t think off too many that stand out, although my mom has a friend that gave us pyjamas, sweaters, and earrings with fluffy kittens on it every single year. Not so cute when you’re 18.

Best/Worst present: A case of microwave popcorn. I was 10-ish, we didn’t have a lot of money for treats like this so my mom thought it would be a nice surprise. I thought it was a joke and was literally throwing popcorn bags out of the box looking for the “real” present,” and was surprised and a little angry when I realized that was it. I still feel guilty for being such an ungrateful little shit. Now that I’m an adult (and more aware of how hard she worked to hold it all together), I realize it’s one of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever gotten.

Worst: Gift cards that were stolen from Wal-mart and never loaded with money from my estranged father. I now check all gift cards before heading to the store with them after the embarrassment of not being able to use them in the store…thanks Dick!

Best: The following year my mother gave me several (at least 5) gift cards for new tires…all wrapped separately and with distractions planted so I couldn’t figure out I was getting gift cards…5 grains of rick in a jewelry sized box will fuck with you.

Worst present was actually given to me EVERY YEAR FOR 7 YEARS!!! My grandmother would buy all the other grandkids tvs, boom boxes, jewelry, computers, but our family got the dollar store version of the life savers book. You know that thing tat has like 8 packs of live savers, but not life savers. I HATE THOSE DAMN THINGS NOW!

Best – a new ipad (bought it for myself) but i ended up not liking it, so i guess that does not count, i guess it would be a new set of pots and pans. i dont often have good gift mojo. i am not hard to buy for, i just never have gotten like the best gift ever, lots were good, but… i sound like an ungrateful biatch! wow

Worst- My former mother in law gave me cinnamon scented things every year for SIX years. Not so bad you’d say until you count the fact that I am incredibly allergic to cinnamon, especially artificial cinnamon. I’m still convinced the woman was trying to kill me.

Best- About 4 years ago my grandma gave me “the family spoon” Sounds ridiculous but it is a fantastic spoon and the oldest heirloom in our family. It dates back to 1770 London and it was one of the only things great x 5 grandpa Smith brought it with him when he came to America. The spoon is my favorite non living thing in my entire house.

Worst Present Ever: My soon-to-be mother-in-law bought me men’s underwear for Christmas one year because I didn’t strike her as the feminine type. (And I married this woman’s son anyway–and remain happily married at that. Go figure.)

Best Present Ever: An awesome trip planned entirely by my husband that swept us away for a two night stay in Pittsburgh to see MY FAVORITE HOCKEY TEAM’S ARCH-RIVALS PLAY. I didn’t have the heart to tell him of the mistake, so I rooted for the Penguins and even let him buy me a foam finger with their emblem on it. When we got home and he realized the mistake he had made (I didn’t tell him), he planned a bonfire to roast the foam finger. Best Christmas present ever.

Worst- a 24″ talking Rocky Balboa bobble head. All it ever said was “Adrian!!”

Best- I received a porcelain doll from my parents when I was 10. The first time I saw it I wanted it so bad and when I went to show my dad it was gone. I cried and cried. I received it a few months later for Christmas!! I still have it.

Best present ever: My friends pooled their money to buy me a half-hour drive in a Lamborghini. Plus a large model Countach, which was wrapped in black with yellow ‘lane lines.’ Even though the deal turned out to be a scam (the guys selling rides didn’t have any cars), the thought still made it the best present ever.

Worst presents: My ditzy MIL walked around Target to fill my stocking with stuff like little yellow post-it notes, a dish scrubber, etc. Also, every year she asked, “What do you want for Christmas?” and we’d say, “A large warm blanket.” We’d get a spice rack. Or a puzzle. (No, she wasn’t poor.)

Best present ever- being utterly certain (and I was correct, too) that we had just conceived our dreamed of and hoped for child at about 2 A.M. Christmas morning. (We had been inventing mixed drinks and playing Uno all night and my husband and I wound up under the Christmas tree, really blitzed, uh… enjoying each other’s company in a marital fashion… and I was getting poked in the nose by low branches and then I said to myself “Oh, holy crap! I’m PREGNANT!”. It was AWESOME. XD

Worst- I think it was the electric leg razor from my MIL that came with the statement, “I like this, so if you don’t want it you can give it to ME hahahah… then she wanted to “borrow” it 2 days later. I said she could keep it and she was all like “Oh, if you’re SURE… hehehe”. I should have smashed it with a brick instead, but I didn’t have the spine back then.

I’m kind of a Christmas lover and hater, one of the parts that makes me hate it is the gifting. I love to give but I feel profoundly uncomfortable receiving gifts, especially considering most of my “loved ones” really don’t have a clue when it comes to gift giving. “Emergency candles, and a pair of orange fuzzy socks…thanks but I’m a massage therapist and have a million candles in my house, I hate the color orange, and fuzzy socks make my feet smell funky…but really thanks.” I also have three sisters, so to save time my parents would usually just find out if there was one thing that cropped up on all 4 lists and get that, which meant that they’d give me (the doll hater) a cabbage patch kid 2 of my sisters asked for, etc. So picking a worst gift is difficult.

The best gift ever was last Christmas, and it is a three way tie. When I was in college a million, trillion years ago I was an art major with an emphasis in photography. I dropped out of college, gave up photography, travelled, then became a boring responsible adult with boring responsible jobs, bought a house, got married, then my husband left me with a huge mountain of debt, and then I wrecked my car and the insurance wouldn’t pay anything on it because it was a worthless POS. I took to calling 2012 “The Big Suck”, it was a horrible, horrible year. I gave up all my hobbies and entertainment that cost money and have been working my ass off to get out of debt, I turned into angry frumpy girl who was known for being miserable and unfun.

My oldest brother bought his wife a new car and gave me her used car. My next brother bought himself a new high end Nikon DSLR camera and gave me his old Canon DSLR and lenses so I could take up photography again. Then the youngest brother paid to have the roof on my crappy house re-done. My sisters got together and put together a payment towards one of my debts, then my parents paid the remainder on it. I was touched because my family knows I am almost physically incapable of asking for help, they didn’t ask they just stepped in and did it and they got it right. I still get a little weepy when I think about it.

Best gift ever. A beautiful pair of “diamond” earrings that came in a flocked plastic long stemmed rose that my daughter purchased all by herself for me at the secret santa shop when she was in Kindergarten. I stiill break them out for extra special occassions (when I only have to wear them for about an hour–which is about how long it takes before my ears start to turn green and ooze)

worst gift ever. my (now ex) husband bought me a new blue ray DVD player (my old DVD player was fine) and a set of DVD’s to a show I dont watch. All I had asked for was a Kindle paperwhite (which I didnt get). one year later–we are no longer together. (not a surprise)

Can it be BOTH best and worst? A 9 lb baby girl, whom I liked much better on the Outside, because while she was on the Inside she liked to stand up and stretch, not caring a bit if I was able to breathe. She turned out to be bipolar and I can’t say I was that surprised.

I completely understand. If I outlive at least two more people, I have a book to write myself. It might have to be fictionalized because, like your story, some people close to me actually think (or thought) I made stuff up because it’s all so bizarre–the ones who no longer think it’s false only now believe me because they happened to, unluckily, either be around in person or on the phone with me when some poop hit the fan.

Best Ever – being in NY City at Christmas. The in-laws were there – but eh…. the city is MAGICAL.

Worst Ever – getting a .22 rifle from my soon to be husband – who ended up being an ex-husband. It was a really crappy gun – and he was SO proud of it. Thought I would LOVE it – never give a woman you argue with A LOT – a GUN. He wasn’t the smartest person.

Worst: My mom is the Queen of bad gifts. One year, when I was in High School, she gave me a cigarette case for Christmas. I have never smoked. Another year, when I was about 30, she gave me a pink night shirt, appropriate for a 10 year old girl. (Shades of your grandfather.) It was unreturnable, but I was able to give it to a 10 year old girl.

Best: My best friend and I take a day off work a week or so before Christmas each year and bake cookies. That’s what we give each other. It’s therapeutic. Especially since we drink while we bake.

Worst present ever: We were somewhat poor when I was younger and lived in a trailer park. My mom thought it would be funny on my 16th birthday to give me a matchbox car and a yard sign for my birthday. They all thought it was hilarious. I waited for an hour or two thinking there would be a party or something… nothing happened. I cried in my room all night (this was my only gift).

Best Present Ever: My soon-to-be hubby has never been very good at saying the right thing or giving the right gifts. I am not very materialistic so I don’t really mind.. but sometimes a woman needs to know she is appreciated. So one day, I told him that he never brings me gifts or tells me how much he loves me. A week later, I was home cleaning house and sweating my butt off and he walks in with a gift. I open it… it wasn’t a flower, it wasn’t a card… it wasn’t candies or chocolates… it was a pocket vibrator. My man gave me the gift of sex. This is why I am marrying him!

worst ever- my dad bought my SIL and I matching Hello Kitty watches. We were sooo confused and he told us the lady at the store said “all the 20 yr old girls were wearing them”. wtf?! haha we went to return them. turns out he paid $90 each for them. for hot pink hello kitty watches. haha oh dad… 🙂 i cant blame the guy for trying!

Best present ever: When we first started dating, my husband gave me a stepladder, because he had seen me climbing on a chair to get something from a high cabinet. When he expressed concern, I had to tell him I was too irresponsible (and poor) to own an actual stepladder. He brought me one the next day, telling me he wanted me to be safe.

Worst present ever: Our first Christmas together, he gave me a pair of platform sandals with lucite heels. They were white and strappy and 4 inches high. TOTAL HOOKER SHOES. I laughed, because I thought they were a joke.

Best present ever (in recent history): Hubby got me a massage table a few years ago. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, and is a great boost for marriage ruts! Except that now we bicker over who’s turn it is to receive the massage.

Worst present ever: My son’s father – now my ex – gave me a membership to the gym to get my body back in shape because I was flabby and disgusting (his words) after having the baby… 2 months prior.
all this, while himself was at least 60 pounds overweight. yeah.

not so much a best present for me, but similar to your burp guns, I bought marshmallow guns for my (ADULT) siblings on the other coast for christmas a few years ago. my mom still bitches about finding marshmallows in her house. This year, they’re getting Airzookas (thinkgeek.com = best store ever!).

Worst present ever…a pregnant “barbie” doll (generic as all) that you removed the belly and there was a baby in there. She wore a flower moo-moo and came with an extra belly cover, it was flat so she didn’t always have to be pregnant. But that’s not the worst part, the baby was a BOY!! And yes, you could tell. I really need to have my mom find that because no one ever believes me…

Also, my middle husband had a sister in law who owned a thrift shop. She used to give us gifts from her thrift shop. Once, I got a bottle of perfume called ‘Jingle’. It smelled like floor cleaner and made me break out in hives just from smelling it. I think she was trying to kill me.

Worst gift: my first Christmas married to my EX husband. He taped an initial “D” charm (with a diamond, he wasn’t cheaping out) to the lid of the box, so that when I opened it there was nothing. And then laughed at me when I teared up in disappointment.

Best gift: from my now husband. Diamond hoop earrings. And pretty much anything he ever gives me because he listens to what I want/like and isn’t in it for his own amusement.

Worst: The year I got a photo album that came as a door prize when you lose so much money at the casino. I’ve never been to the casino. My h’s grandma goes to the casino. His dad gave me the photo album. Regifted, of course. Wondered why we left so quickly (because I was trying not to cry)

Best:The year santa brought us a swingset. We were little redneck children, so we didn’t use it according to the directions or anything (don’t think you’re supposed to swing from the top bar? HMM) but it was so much fun.

Here is where I’ll get all lame and tell you that my oldest daughter was born two weeks before Christmas so she was my best present ever. Hey, she was a month early, so it works right? The second best was a Molly American Girl doll when I was ten. I know how freaking hard that must have been for my mom to come up with the money and knowing that made me love it even more than I already would have.

Worst…my step-mother had this habit of buying me the best most prettiest twirly dresses from Nordstrom for Christmas for a few years in a row. The problem? She didn’t care for me much back then and she’d buy them two sizes two small. Even though my mom would take them back and buy me new dresses, the exact ones were always way sold out. Seems silly now, but from six – nine years old it was pretty fucking uncool. The whole thing was really to show my mother up money wise…she’d always leave the price tags on.

My best present is something I think this crowd will especially appreciate! One Christmas my mom and I were out shopping and kept seeing ceramic roosters for sale all over the place. We joked about giant ceramic cocks everywhere, as you do, and laughed hysterically about it every time. So that year for Christmas she got one for me and made me explain to my entire family (including my ultra-prudish grandparents) why I was laughing so hard that I was crying. She passed away the next year and that was the worst present, but that rooster is still in my kitchen.

Best Present Ever: Finding out I was — surprise! — pregnant with my daughter. I was only 21, but I’d probably still be a selfish twat if I hadn’t had her, and I think I learned more from her in the first 10 years than she did from me.

Worst Present Ever: Bless their little hearts, my MIL and SIL are nine times out of 10 terrible gift givers, mainly because they like to shop at this chain of stores that sells distressed merchandise (imagine bottled marinades three months past their best before date and stale Jelly Bellies and awkwardly coloured bedding sets missing a pillowcase). Mr. ReignbowGirl and I have been completely digital for photos for a number of years now, yet nearly every Christmas and birthday I get at least one photo album from my MIL and/or SIL. I recently took an entire box full of albums to Value Village (Savers, for you US folks) to donate. My husband accused me of inflicting misery on others for doing so. Hmph.

Best present: From my husband – I tell everyone it was the gift that said I love and trust you… it was a new Glock!!

Worst present: I can’t think of one for me, but once my husband received a jar of mustard from his brother and sister-in-law. Not a special mustard that was rare and cost a fortune. Just a regular small jar of mustard. That was probably 25 years ago and we still laugh about it!

My best present ever is tied to my worst Christmas shopping expedition ever, so I’ll use it as representative of the best and worst.

Best: a scrapbook my mother made for me not long after my beloved dog, Flannery, died. It featured Flan and a lot of other furry babies that had predeceased her as well as those still alive, along with human friends and family, too. It was just so touching and so perfect.

Worst experience: in order to make this scrapbook and my brother’s as well, my mother sent us both out shopping in not quite 20F weather when we were both sick with sinusitis. After shopping listlessly for about half an hour, we called her and told her it was too cold and we wanted to come back to her house. She tried to talk us into going to a restaurant instead and having a few drinks, which should have been a warning bell for us since she usually doesn’t want us to even sniff brandy and drive afterwards. We insisted and went back to her house anyway, so she had to double-time it on the scrapbook making, but still managed to present us both with gifts that we adored.

Best present ever – so hard to say…but my friend Pamela got me a real, live, professional tambourine in my Christmas grab bag this year. I loved it so much that they insisted on taking it away from me when we were all watching a movie. Perhaps because they were jealous about my impressive rhythm.

Worst present ever – my sister in law gave me a used potty seat for my child. I had asked for something useful when my oldest was about 15 months. And since they will have no memories *of this Christmas, I asked for a potty training chair. She found one…at a thrift shop. So yeah, I got a present that people actually shit in.

When I was 12 I got a hot pink Holly Hobby bedroom set, complete with canopy bed. I hate pink. I had wanted a canopy bed for years, but it wasn’t until I was 12 going on 20 that my parents could afford one. I really tried to make the best of it, never inviting my friends over to witness the horror. I was so thankful when it was time for my baby sister to get her own big girl bed a year later.

Worst: The year I begged and begged my mom for a leather jacket. I was thinking a short trench style and was certain I had explained that. I never actually expected to get one because that was way above the spending limit my parents set on Christmas. When I unwrapped it and saw the box with the name of a local store that sold all leather goods I was so excited I almost started crying. When I pulled it out I realized I was now the proud owner of a mens jacket two sizes too big. It didn’t even have the advantage of being a cool biker jacket or something. It barely fit over my hips and was saggy everywhere else and the sleeves were too long.

Best: The giant Erector Set my dad got me completely out of the blue. I didn’t even know something like that existed and I don’t remember ever expressing any interest in something of that nature, so I have no idea what made him think to get it. I played with that thing for years.

Best present – a Lego watch my brother brought me from Belgium (that was the same year he and my SIL told us they were expecting a baby. The watch wins because the baby is now 14 with the attitude. Haha.)

They weren’t the worst gifts, because they totally made me laugh and make for a great story now. But my grandmother used to give us Oil of Olay every year. From, like, the age of 9.
One year she also gave us every dime ever minted. We got to keep the money but she also gave us those paper rolls. We had to roll them all ourselves. I don’t remember how much it was, but too bad Coinstar hadn’t been invented yet.

Worst present ever: I wanted a phone for my bedroom. My dad gave a chocolate phone. It wasn’t even good chocolate.
Best present ever: Last year my best friend sent me a bag of the potato chips of been looking for everywhere and hadn’t been able to find.

I have two best presents:
#1 age 3-4. Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas. I figured out that I could hand it to adults or my big brother and say read this to me and they would and that story would come alive! I loved that book so much I slept with it snuggled in my arms every night. And that started my lifelong love of books and reading.
#2 After being disappointed with my gifts on Christmas (we were in the UK visiting his family who give me lightweight things like calendars I can put in the suitcase…like I need 3-4 of them!..but whatever) the next morning when we got up my then boyfriend asked if I felt like going ring shopping! He’s not a romantic man so that was his way of asking me to marry him. I did!
Worst: age 23. My mom gave me a set of 3 pairs of ankle socks with hearts all over them (one pink, one purple and one blue) and when I looked disappointed and said-Mom, wth? I’m 23! she answered: but all the kids are wearing them! (what kids?! The ones who are 8?!) grr!

I would have to say my worst present ever was as a kid and there were 5 kids and we were in severe poverty. Dad had left all of us when diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia & couldn’t stand to be around us kids plus he just picked up and left my mom with all kinds .of debt. So at x-mas (she worked two jobs to feed us. ) One job was in nursing home so old people knitted and sewed five small dachshunds weiner dogs out of scrap material. Of course we snooped and saw them before xmas so we were really down. Only other present was orange, apple, & some nuts. My best xmas gift was a big diamond wedding ring to replace lost one he gave me 24 yrs ago. He pampers me all the time! Best husband ever!

One of my best presents is working for Victor! But also-Thank you for always giving me a time to smile and laugh. When I am having a hard day, I open your book and read a chapter and I am good to go! Thank you for that gift!

Best: Our entire 4-person family leaving on a trip to New Hampshire immediately after Christmas , watching 2 kids learn to snowboard (very well) there, and oohing and ahing at the New Year’s Eve fireworks show over the snow-covered landscape around the Mt. Washington resort.

Worst: 2 FUGLY neckties received at Christmas which came 11 months after I finished my transition and vowed to never wear a tie again. These came from a relative who knew better but disapproved of my deciding to live the rest of my life as a woman.

Worst #1: When I was 25 my new mother-in-law gave me 15″ tall ceramic angel statues. One was a soap dispenser that you press on her head to get the soap. The other was a candle holder and you put the tea light candle in her butt. (Seriously. W.T.H.)

Worst #2: Same person (2 years prior) gave me a plastic comb/mirror combo set. You know, the kind that isn’t actually a mirror but it’s a little reflective sticker they put on the plastic circle. The little dollar store item you give a 3 year old.

Most memorable (best) are all from childhood: my pink Barbie house, my new shiny 10-speed bike and the boombox that I could carry on my shoulder (pads).

Worst: we draw names in my extended family, and a few years ago the…odd…aunt got me (“odd” has now officially been diagnosed, but that’s neither here nor there). She got me an assortment of horse things, because I’m a horse lover. Used, old brushes, hoof picks, a broken halter, and an old lead rope. I hadn’t owned a horse for over five years.

Best: Someone gave me an autographed 8×10 glossy still of Russell Crowe as Gladiator. To this day I don’t know who gave it to me: the un-stamped envelope (marked NSW Australia) was left in my mailbox with the pic inside. Awesome. If that person could get me the real Gerard Butler this year, I can be single…

Worst present ever: 1/2 bottle of hand lotion that (now ex-) mother-in-law bought for 25 cents at a yard sale, then bragged to me what a good haggler she is because they were asking 50 cents.

Best present ever: A marriage proposal (from *current* husband) on bended knee at midnight on christmas eve under a clear, starry sky on the shore of a lake in the poconos. He gave me a huge, plastic heart-shaped ring that had a flip-top – when you opened it there was sparkly lip gloss inside. Evidently there was quite a commotion at his company; 1/2 the people polled said he absolutely could NOT propose without a ring…the other 1/2 said I should pick out my own. So the 5-year-old daughter of one of his employees offered up the solution.

Worst Present Ever: Step-grandmother used to get me sheets for Christmas. How unexciting for me (my sister used to get them, too) and insulting to my mother. Payback years later when she was in a nursing home, my sister and I bought her sheets.

Best Christmas present ever: A round trip ticket from my best friend so I could go see my Mom for Christmas. He is the best-est friend anyone could ever ask for!!! Love him!

One Christmas, my then boyfriend gave me panty hose (size 2x), bras (size 42 B) and some size 10panties. I’m a medium for hose, 34 C bra and 6 in underwear. I found during the ensuing argument that he had raided his own stash — he enjoyed cross dressing. Worst ever Christmas gift in so many ways.

Best is something I didn’t realize was a gift at the time… the incredibly wonderful memories of happy Christmases with my parents and sister — the love and laughter that filled our home and seemed to spill out on Christmas like no other time of the year. I think the best gifts are the ones that money can’t buy…

Best Present Ever: This MST3K necklace my Dad got me last year. http://www.picapicapress.com/product/mst3k-locket-necklace
It’s not the necklace itself. It’s the fact that I posted it on my FB wall in February. I loved it. It was awesome. It was sold out and no date for more was listed. He kept checking until he could buy one for me for Christmas because he knew how much I would enjoy it. I have a tumblr dedicated to it.

Worst present ever – Baked goods and candy last year at work. I couldn’t eat any of it because it all had wheat or barley. I have Celiac disease and couldn’t eat any of it. Not even the chocolate. My own doctor who knows I’m gluten free gave me stuff I couldn’t eat.

Worst Present Ever: I was 15 and I got the “HORIZON” name plate for my at the time 12 year old 1982 Plymouth Horizon that I was driving. I also got the Beatles Anthology which I already had. Yeah… my dad was kinda clueless that year.

Best Present Ever: (which TOTALLY made up for the name plate, even if it was 15 years after the fact) A BMW Z3 Roadster. Got it last year not for Christmas but for my birthday. My dad has gotten a LOT better at the whole present thing.

Best Christmas present ever: a Zippy the monkey doll when I was 8. Not the weird one with the banana but the fantastically realistic one with the cute overalls and hat. He was my best friend until I was 12.

Worst gift ever: I was 25 and my stepmom gave me a sweater two sizes too small. Her comment, “It will motivate you to lose weight.” It didn’t.

Best: Olive oil soap from Greece. My dad and stepmom came back, and my dad had insisted that, no, I would not rather have a piece of jewelry, I would rather have olive oil soap.

Worst: The same lime-green-on-acid sweater I’d been given the year before. Which is to say that I returned the newer one to JC Penney, came home, and discovered that the other had been stashed away in the closet for an entire year. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who’d forgotten about it.

When a “worst” turned into a “best”: I was snooping in my parents’ closet during the holidays when I was about 13 years old, and found a little stuffed pony that made galloping noises when you squeezed it. I couldn’t believe they would get me such lame gift (I was 13, after all, so anything childish was “lame”). When I opened it Christmas morning, I half-heartedly feigned enthusiasm. My mom then told me to read the gift tag hanging from it. They had bought me horse riding lessons! Best present ever! It also taught me a lesson a) about snooping, and b) being snotty about gifts.

The best: Being able to see my then 2 year old
Grandson 2 years ago at Christmas (he lives in Alaska and I don’t)
The worst: every Christmas that I am alone without family (which is every other Christmas including this year)
Merry Christmas Jenny. You make me smile. Thank you.

I really only have a worst, because I think all my presents are great, except this one – The Christmas of 1989 Incident. My sister received a beautiful winter coat and I got a box that had poker chips and ping pong balls and a pair of toddler sized Christmas socks. I was 10 years old, so the socks were useless. I hadn’t ever heard of poker and did not own a ping pong table nor paddle.

I don’t know what thought, if any, she put into the hodgepodge of things that were put into the box with my name. I can’t blame senility because that came much later. She was fully in control of her actions and thoughts. Also, we lived with her, so I know she knew that I hadn’t played poker or ping pong and that my feet were larger than the socks she gifted. It was all at once both a complete mind fuck as to why I received them and also a giant box of disappointment because I knew then that out of all 30 of my cousins, I was #30 on the favorites list.

Best: My grandma gave me a guardian angel car decoration that said “never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly” which confused me since I didn’t have a license or a car. Right after Christmas, she took me to test for my license and on the way home, she bought me a car. This was most definitely a once-in-a-lifetime kind-of gift, but damn, can’t really beat that.

Worst: A fluffy purse from my aunt. Was weird, totally not my style, and not well thought out at all.

I’ve had too many Best Gifts to choose one…but last Christmas when my boss had just closed her business and we had zero dollars – we bought NO gifts, I didn’t even buy for my kids – but one of my friends sent me a box with a coffee mug (because I collect them) and a truly hideous pair of mittens (MICHIGAN mittens, with a map!)…and she’d crumpled up $150 one dollar bills and stuffed them in the mittens, mug, and box.
It was an excellent gift. I cried.

Worst: when I was in my mid-teens, my Mom decided I was too old for candy and put toiletry items in my stocking (Gillette lady shavers, shaving cream etc.). I was in high school and still living at home and they would still regularly buy these for me so it was a kind of mystery for me.

Best Gift:
A signed picture of one of my favourite singers. (Jim Byrnes.) My roommate knew how much I liked him and cold called his agent. The agent was just saying how sadly she didn’t expect to see Mr. Byrnes before Christmas so couldn’t help when he walked into the office. I loved it and still do today.

Worst Gift:
When I was 11 I decided I wanted an outdoor fish pond, surrounded with ornamental garden gnomes (the real kind just make a mess). So I dug a hole in the backyard, put a Tupperware tub in it, filled it with water and dumped in a goldfish (poor thing). I then proceeded to tell everyone who would listen that for my birthday and Christmas (forever) I wanted things to make my new pond cool. (Example: the aforementioned gnomes.)

My father told me he thought his gift for me would look great outside at my new little pond. I was thrilled.
Then I opened the gift to find a shirt.

I remember it to this day. It had a shoulder pads and woman on the front in a sailor suit. Seriously? Shoulder pads? I have shoulders like a football player on my own. Anyway back to the story.

Me: “Ha ha, where’s my real present.”
Dad: “That’s it.”
Me:
Sweet Step Mother (who was totally not in on the leading me on part): “You don’t like it?”
Me: “No. It’s really nice. Thanks.”
Me: So my gift is a socially awkward moment and guilt for being ungrateful. And still no damn garden gnomes. You’re getting a bag of snakes next year.

Best and worst Christmas for me was when I was in Junior High – my younger brother had acted in an industrial film and had a big paycheck, and he announced that we were all getting what we WANTED for Christmas! I wanted a pair of Tretorn tennis shoes (yes, I’ve just aged myself), and I got them! Great! What made it the worst was that I had peeked under my parents’ bed pre-12/25 so I had ruined my own surprise. GUILT forever.

Another best and worst would be 2006. My mother had died in a horrific car crash in October, but before she got into that crash, she’d shown my brother a porcelain doll she’d found for my niece – the face of whom looked exactly like the niece! The car crash involved a fire, so the doll and everything else in Mommy’s possession was done for. My brother, yes, that same generous boy who’d shot the industrial film, FOUND the doll online somewhere and managed to give my niece a Christmas gift from her Grandma from the grave.

I have an estranged grandfather too! It’s hard to explain to people…I lived in the same city as him for 2 years in university and never saw him…always wondered if we passed by each other in a mall and didn’t even know…

The worst gift I ever got was a package of tampons. Not just tampons, but a sample pack, the kind you get in the mail. These were given to me by my husband’s dad’s fiancé, the first Christmas that we spent together. Needless to say, it was mighty awkward. (And hubby got deodorant. Lovely.) Over the years, she proceeded to get us many weird and crappy gifts, even more so when we had kids. Fortunately she seems to have stopped.

Best gift? That’s really hard to say, although both my children were conceived over the Christmas season 😉

We have nerf guns in our house… it absolutely made moving easier when we were both stressed out from packing and I all of a sudden got hit with a dart and looked up just in time to see my boyfriend toss the other gun my way. Best battle ever.

Best gift I ever received was a necklace from my boyfriend last year. I have pretty specific taste in jewelry, and it’s hard to find a piece I would really love. My boyfriend hunted and managed to find the perfect one for me. I still wear it every single day.

Worst gift wasn’t one of mine, but it’s too funny not to share. When my stepsister was 8, she wanted a pet hedgehog. 14 years later, she’s 22 years old, sort of a fashion queen, very neat and tidy. Her dad decides to give her a hedgehog for Christmas. She comes home to our house, and walks in with this squeaking creature that it turns out likes to poo on it’s own running wheel, then run in it. She was horrified.

We ended up giving the hedgehog to a family with some younger kids that really wanted one. I’ll never forget the look on my sister’s face, though.

My MIL gave us an envelope that had a letter saying we owed them $2,000 that my husband had borrowed while in college for room and board. She gave us this “gift” on Christmas morning while everyone was opening gifts and when the other relatives inquired what was in our envelope she proudly declared, “A letter saying they owe us $2,000.”

WORST – My grandmother left me a key to her house while she traveled to Europe so that I could get my present off the counter while she was away. It was my 21st birthday, so the present was obviously going to be something meaningful, nay, amazing.

When I walked into the kitchen, I found a scale (the kind you weigh yourself on) with a receipt to Bed Bath and Beyond taped to it. No card, no wrapping paper.

The kicker was that it wasn’t even digital and only cost her $11 after tax.

Worst present ever: ALL three of my brothers who were born on Christmas. No, they are not triplets. Yes, it is weird.

Best present ever: The year we lived on an army base in Japan and I wished for nothing but lots of snow for Christmas Day. And lo and behold, woke up to 3 feet. This alone makes me still believe in Santa at the age of 38.

Best present: Probably any of the years that my husband got me an autographed Neil Gaiman book in which Neil invariably wrote Merry/Happy Christmas and it made me as giddy as a schoolgirl.

Worst present: Toss up. My Mother loved to try and put me in things that she thought were beautiful/cute that I would never be caught dead in. One year she bought me a purple puffer coat. Now, just saying that you wouldn’t think that it was that bad. Oh no. At first glance. But you don’t understand that I am a big, curvy girl. That puffer coat did nothing but exaggerate my overlargeness. I got made fun of from the first second on school grounds until I went home at 3:30. People called me walrus and made Erp Erp Erp noises at me. I threw the coat on the floor of my closet and vowed never to wear it again no matter how cold I was.

Thankfully I live in South Carolina and it really isn’t a big issue.

2nd: My Mom needed pajamas for me. She usually tried to get my sister and I the same things so that we wouldn’t fight over anything. So, high school. Full on Goth/Emo phase. I open my box to receive a pair of bright pink footie pajama with small white lambs all over it that said something like “Twinkle Twinkle LIttle Lamb” They were the most horrific pajamas anyone could ever have given goth me.

Four years later I fished them out of the back of my dresser when we had an ice storm and had no electricity for a week. I’d have probably fished out the puffer coat too if we hadn’t given it to Goodwill! 🙂

Best present ever : my hubs jumped through a whole mess of hoops to procure an autographed copy of ” To kill a mockingbird ” ( my favorite book) for me , and even had Harper lee write a little note to me ( yes she’s still slice, she’s just like 90 something ) anyway , I cried and screamed and pretty much just freaked the fuck out in the best possible way.

Worst present ever ; after spending a year on a starvation diet and living on the treadmill/at yoga/Pilates etc and getting back down to as skinny as I was my freshman year of high school ( a185 pound weight loss that was no easy battle) my mother bought me size 4x flannel granny pajamas with pictures of food all over them .
It was all I could do not to slap the shit out of her .

Best: Tickets to see John and Hank Green on the Tour de Nerdfighting.
Worst: Yahtzee, as a way for me to improve my math skills. I was a straight A math student, but my dad thought I need to improve my basic counting skills.

Worst: Christmas’s living with my mom when we had no tree, no presents, and no food. That was back in the day before Project Night Night.
Best: This past Halloween (my favorite day of the whole year) my husband went out on his own and came back with “Love Forever” in Norwegian tattooed on the inside of his ring finger. It was his first ever tattoo.

Is it bad that I can’t think of a best but a worst immediately springs to mind?

My grandmother on my mother’s side would give my sister and me each $1 for our birthdays and for Chanukah with a note saying she “put money in our accounts.” When we were old enough, we got access to the accounts. Eighteen years of birthdays and Chanukahs plus interest totaled about a hundred bucks. She must have given us $1 and put $2 more in our accounts. Not to sound greedy or something but this was 18 years of leadup with very little payoff.

Best present: A pose-able ballerina doll when I was eight. It’s the ONLY thing I wanted that year. We gathered at my grandparents’ house, where my grandfather played Santa and handed out gifts . After all the gifts had been handed out and opened, and I was trying not to show how disappointed I was, my grandfather pulled a “Ralphie’s father”, and pointed out one last gift that had been hidden in a corner behind the tree. THE DOLL.

Best present ever was my dog/chair/best friend. He was rescued from a puppy mill and at the time we were both shy, insecure, and mildly socially broken. My mom got him for me when I was very ill and lost and really just in need of a friend. I love him ore than words can ever fully express.

Worst present ever: My father (who I suspect forgot to buy me a gift and was trying to cover his ass) did not have a present for me under the tree but told me I got to go out for a special trip with him instead. We ended up at the Auto parts shop, where he made a purchase inside then brought the change he had left over to the claw vending machine outside. He told me I had $5.00 or 5 chances to get a toy and probaby lose OR I could let him play for me and have 5 chances to win. I ended up with a pair of fuzzy dice for a car after he ost 4 0f the 5 times becease the machine “cheated him”

Worst: My aunt (my only not aunt-because-she-married-my-uncle but blood aunt) gave me a portable, inflatable Resusci Annie. It basically looks like one of those doughnut things people use for hemorrhoids with a Resusci Annie plastic mask. I have no idea where she got it or why she gave it to me. It kinda looks like a cheaper version of this: http://healthysimulation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/mini-anne.jpg

Best: My remote start for my car since we don’t have a garage and it is currently 7 degrees here.

Oh yea, and almost best, with a failed delivery- a signed copy of your book from when you were here last year. I had a family member get it signed (we had baby issues and had to leave early) and then we were going to keep it til Christmas for the recipient. The family member gave it to them early. Not a Christmas present after all…

This year, my MIL wins the award for WORST PRESENTS EVER. We aren’t on speaking terms with her. Saturday, we get an odd package in the mail. From China. It’s an electronic circuit board with wires, etc. and a huge warning label: CONTAINS LEAD PAINT. A few hours later, MIL emails to make sure we “got” this gift, and to let us know that since we won’t speak to her, only 2 of the 3 kids are getting Christmas presents, and it’s up to us to decide who gets left out. We throw the gift away and delete the email. Today, the mail lady arrives and I have to sign for a package. It’s from Japan. It’s a plastic “helicopter” and all the writing on the package and instruction manual are in Japanese. Guess where this “gift” is going…

Most memorable – Being the only older child in a fairly large extended family has it’s ups and downs. I’ve always been crazy about Christmas, so each year I would end up decorating trees for my mom, aunt, and grandmother, and doing any other Christmas prep. I also ended up wrapping just about every present for those three families. One year I wrapped everything under the tree for my grandmother. The entire time I was gazing with envy at the TV she had gotten for my niece. Then the countdown started. 2 weeks out, nothing new under the tree. 1 week out, nothing new. Christmas eve, I’m at the tree handing around presents to everyone. My niece gets the TV (and another present that didn’t register at the time). I get to the end and am completely crestfallen, no present for me. AFTER my niece (did I mention, she was 5 at the time) opened up the TV, they finally let me in on the joke. The TV was for me! My prim Christian grandmother was in the corner just giggling with her cleverness. Funny enough, that TV got passed on to my niece, and just got thrown out after sputtering its last bloop. She’s getting my old 42″ plasma for Christmas now LOL.

Worst – Last year I handmade a gorgeous tote bag for my MIL. We got a tube sock stuffed with rice, with pieces of fabric and googly eyes glued to it to make a snowman…. actually, we got 4 of these monstrosities.

Worst Present Ever: My wife has a crazy uncle. Like, legit, on disability for schizophrenia crazy. One year, he gave me a circuit tester. But the winner was the umbrella-style clothes rack. You know, like this (http://www.walmart.com/ip/Household-Essentials-Umbrella-Clothes-Dryer/10309895) only not as nice. What was always weird was that the look on his face made us think that he put actual thought into these things, and it wasn’t just something that struck his fancy at the dollar store.

Best present ever: when I was 12, I opened a box which contained a lovely terrycloth bathrobe from Victoria’s Secret. I was happy to get that, but underneath there were two little scraps of white and pink cotton. Thinking they were underwear, I picked them up, but QUICKLY put them back down again when I realized they were BRAS. I was a bit… underdeveloped… and I felt like the only kid in my grade who didn’t wear one. I was so secretly overjoyed and felt so proud and grown-up. My whole face flushed red. In the home movie, I’m grinning deliriously. Also, she got me A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I loved and went on to read probably 30 times.

Worst present ever: a weird rich aunt that we’d only met once sent us all Christmas gifts every year that were somehow exactly what we didn’t want and also wildly expensive. One year she got me a brown leather jacket with a CINCHED WAIST. No one can pull that off, certainly not a 13 year old girl.

Worst Christmas present ever:
When I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, my aunt (who has 3 boys and maybe doesn't know what to get a little girl for Christmas?) gave me an ant farm. When I opened it, I jumped away and started sobbing because I thought it had ants in it already and I was terrified.

Worst? My aunt gave me mixed nuts one year. It was the family grab bag and she insisted I should pick her gift because I’d really like it. She was sincere.

My ex-Mother In Law got me an ugly sweater that managed to make my ass look big. But she gave me the gift receipt so I went to exchange it. I figured it was inexpensive, knowing her, so I chose a $15 sweater to replace it. Nope, that was too much…it was a $9 sweater! And it’s not like she was poor or anything, the woman was just cheep. She bought the sweater because it was a deal and she wouldn’t have to spend too much money. She had no care on whether I would actually like it. So many reasons why I’m glad I’m out of that family…so many reasons. Not a 89 cent child’s sweater, but close.

Best present: All five seasons of a show I loved on DVD, unasked for, because hubby usually squeaks about money at Christmas. This one year, after I battled Chicken box in early December, he got me this.

Worst present ever: Hard to pick from two different years. You chose. One year, I was pregnant with our third child, and I got ten washcloths in different colors so I could better wash the kids faces. Another year, I got nothing. Zero. he was too busy to buy anything until the 26th. Good thing I love him AND I’m not a homicidal maniac driven by greed.

Best: A gift certificate for a full-body massage, wrapped along with the kitchen timer counting down to the appointment, which was already made for that afternoon.
Worst: I asked for an newly released Ella Fitzgerald box set, and got a 3-disc John Tesh collection instead. Because, you know, they’re both “jazz”.

Best : My husband wrote to loads of my favourite people asking them tomsend me a birthday message. Three did ! The historian Ronald Hutton, the explorer Benedict Allen, and best of all my most favourite author, John Crowley. Second best would be the pendant he bought me with patterns from the Newgrange tomb in Ireland that we visited on honeymoon, and “Forever” engraved on the back in Ogham script.

Worst : From my estranged mother ( who I should mention is jolly well heeled !) a plastic bag containing several pairs of her old knickers which she thought I might like. She also tried to give me a pair of slippers in which an elderly relative had breathed their last. I don’t know if she thought of these as gifts or what the rationale was, really.

Well mine is from my oldest daughter’s perspective. Couple years ago we flew to Houston. She had just received 2 months prior to that a brand new Nintendo DSi for her birthday. Well on the return flight it fell out of her bag and me being concerned with getting my wife and 4 kids off the plane neglected to do an equipment check. Calling the airlines is like asking Gholum for the ring back. If he even bothers to respond (they didnt) you wont like the answer.

Fast forward a month to my youngest son’s birthday. He gets a brand new Nintendo DSi for his birthday. Now my daughter is upset because it brings it all back. To make matters worse her grandparents who gave it to her called to wish him a happy birthday and I made her get on the phone and tell them she lost it. Well she lost it big time when she tried to tell them. Im fairly certain she was speaking latin through all the blubbering.

When it was all over I stressed the importance of taking responsibility and admitting when you’d made a mistake. Then I handed her a replacement for the one she lost that I bought the day after we got back.

Worst Present: Awesome Nintendo DSi you lost literally less than month after you got it and then having to watch your brother get one for his BD less than a month later and fessing up to your grandparents that you cant keep track of 3 things. The nerve of some 7 year olds…

Best Present: Getting a replacement after your dad tries to teach you some kind of life lesson. That guy is a total dick.

Bonus Present: The look on my wife and her mom’s face when I gave it to her. You’d think I just acted out an entire sappy Hallmark Channel movie and Im the super cool dude who punches Douchenozzele McAnuspants in the face and proposes to the girl next door.

Worst ever is a toss up between the year my first husband didn’t buy me one at all, not even a card..or the year he bought me a really cheap and nasty white T-shirt from a market, with some badly printed ‘humorous’ caption about Saddam on it and a bootleg CD. I’d asked for a bangle!
Best present ever was when I was 10. I got my own little portable record player which meant I could play what I want when I wanted, in my own room.

Best Present Ever. Gorgeous dark wood hand drum carved with dragons (dragons!!). I still hope to be able to play it well some day. It was a TOTAL surprise.

Worst Present Ever is a tie between the electric shaver my mother gave me when I was 12 (seriously?? As a present?? She must have forgotten the deodorant and nail clippers. Then my personal hygeine stash (and holiday) would have been complete.) and the Hello Kitty electric toothbrush set my grandmother gave me when I was somewhere in the 11ish range. Because nothing says “awesome” for a childhood Christmas like clean teeth. I guess “tween” is the best time for embarrasing hygeine-related gifts.

Best – Usually any year I buy my own – apparently I’m an enigma to my family members, and they are completely clueless as to what I would enjoy. (And no, I don’t need pricey items in the slightest…but I certainly don’t need things like – expired calendars – expired date books – expired planners …perhaps you see a trend?…lol) At this point, I would rather receive a gift card, as it breaks my heart to see them wasting money on things that they try to match up to my interests, but they know nothing about, so grab the first thing on the clearance shelf that depicts the logo.

Worst, when I was about 7 – my cousins my age and younger all received toys, my siblings and cousins older than me all received plush blankets. I received a shirt. I think that was the year I gave up on Christmas really being for me in any way shape or form.

Funnily enough, I love giving presents, and I pride myself on trying to find something really worthy of the individual…even if I don’t have much money to spend. That is what gifting should be…if you are just going to phone it in, why bother…after all, it is the thought that counts, and if the person isn’t worth thinking about and finding something suitable, then don’t bother – just gift card them.

Best present: The 2-ft-tall homemade dollhouse lovingly crafted by my grandfathers and filled with furniture my mom made using cereal boxes and fabric. You never would’ve known unless you looked closely. Everything is still in a closet at my folks’ house.

Worst present: My grandmother dying. That year, I had named a star after her and never got to tell her. I assume she’s up there keeping an eye on it.

Best present ever was when my husband proposed to me. It wasn’t real elaborate (like yours), but it really made the day.
Worst present ever was a extremely hideous flower printed corduroy pant suit that my maternal grandmother gave to me. She sent the same outfit to my cousin who was a year older ensuring that I would have to wear the outfit for another year. The gift that kept getting worse.

Best present ever: Kind of a tie between the potters wheel I got for my birthday 10 years ago and the 7 month trip to Australia & Fiji back in 1982 when I was 11 years old from my parents (yes, they came too).
Worst present: Kinda like yours, except the sweater did fit, but only once. After I washed it, the arms got really really long (like Orangutang long) and the body of the sweater got really really short. It became a halter top for people with really long and cold arms. I even exchanged it for a new one as I thought the first one must have been a one off kind of defective, but no, the next one did exactly the same thing. Perhaps Martha Stewart could have advised me on the proper way to block out a sweater, but I was 13, what did I know about sweater blocking?

Best: My first iPod. It’s my favorite intimate object because I’m a music junkie and have been since my parents brought me into the world to Led Zeppelin. But it was the best gift because I hadn’t even thought to ask for it and it might not have been mine at all. After years of pickle prizes being gifted to my sister, I’d found that damn pickle first that year. And it was better that it was mine because she wouldn’t have needed it anyway – she already had an iPod. Truly, it was meant to be mine. 🙂

Worst: In 2005 my mother-in-law gave me a photo box proudly celebrating the graduation class of 2005. I held the box in my hands confused and at a loss for words and she said, “What’s the matter, don’t you love it?” (Probably assuming I used those sorts of things since I am big into photography) My fiance and I just looked at her and he said, “Mom, we graduated in 2000. Why the hell would you buy her a box that said class of 2005?” MIL: “Because it was on sale. Got myself one, too.” She didn’t even realize why it was a ridiculous gift because all that mattered was the price. It was the first of many questionable gifts and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Best present ever: My first Christmas with my then boyfriend (but now future hubby). He could have gotten me nothing at all, and it wouldn’t have mattered, because he was there sharing the day with me.

Worst present ever: When I was 11 or so, my aunt and uncle got me a sweater lint remover. I was totally baffled, and thus began years of thoughtless Christmas presents from them.

Worst present: My sister-in-law must have went shopping that day at Walgreens and she gave my husband and I the 6-pk KY Touch Massage oils in front of my in-laws. So awkward! How do you even respond to that?!

Best: My mom is so thoughtful in her gifts, that I love so many of them. I always remember the year I got a Cabbage Patch doll & Cabbage Patch Big Wheel from Santa. I love that precise moment of the magical feeling that Christmas brings.

Best present: A used house. A huge used house. 3000 + square feet and every single inch needing remodeling. It went down to studs. It’s the house I’ve always wanted, great for parties and I love it…although it did cause my husband to have a heart attack while cutting down a dozen trees on the property. True story. No bullshit.

Worst present: A used house. A huge used house…. after 4 years we’re still remodeling… I’m in spackle hell.

Worst ever was when I was 12ish and received not one, but TWO umbrellas with a flashlight in the handle. WTF? Never mind the fact that I had the most overprotective parents in the world and never went anywhere at night where I would need both an umbrella and flashlight, but what the heck about it made 2 separate people think that it was a great gift for me??? Sigh.

Best: My mom is so thoughtful in her gifts, that I love so many of them. I always remember the year I got a Cabbage Patch doll & Cabbage Patch Big Wheel from Santa. I love that precise moment of the magical feeling that Christmas brings.

Worst present: My sister-in-law must have went shopping that day at Walgreens and she gave my husband and I the 6-pk KY Touch Massage oils in front of my in-laws. So awkward! How do you even respond to that?!

Worst present: We go to my husband’s father’s home for Christmas and his second wife’s family is usually there. When it comes time to open gifts they all sit around and open gifts from each other. Somewhere in the middle of it all my father-in-law realizes we haven’t been given out “gifts” yet, so he hands us a card with a check for $50 to $100 dollars in it.

Best present: it’s hard because The Husband does wonderful things for me. I suppose it would be a toss up: Two years ago I got an upgraded wedding ring, this year I got a puppy.

Worst present ever- a large statue of a white hand with its fingers crossed sitting on a black pedestal from my father in law. We had to drag it out every time he came over for years. WTF?

Best present ever- a horse! My parents were apparently completely insane and gave in to my begging for a horse. We got the actual horse just before Christmas and I woke up Christmas morning to a beautiful leather-tooled saddle. He was a black gelding quarter horse named Midnight who turned out to be an epic pain in the ass. But still…a HORSE!

In my early 20’s, one of my coworkers was a retired naval engineer in his 80s. He had an artistic streak, and we often talked about our hobbies, so we knew I liked to dance. One year we exchanged gifts rather late, so I decided I’d just take mine home and open it with the rest of my gifts Christmas morning.

I was a bit horrified when I opened the small box and found myself pulling out a belly dancing hip scarf positively covered with jingly coins. In front of my rather conservative parents. Fortunately my mother started laughing so hard that I thought for a moment she was going to make herself sick. I wore the thing all day, making a merry noise wherever I went.

I never opened work gifts in front of my family again.

This was actually my best gift. Worst gift was a clear plastic ruler with a cable company logo on it that an aunt mailed to me.

Best – my hubby got me a pool cover pump to get all the stanky pond-scum water off the top of the pool winter cover in the spring. He said he had my gift that year narrowed down to that or a divorce. Worked like a charm! Pool is so much easier to uncover in the spring and we’re still happily married!

Worst – actually, it’s not the gift itself that is the problem. And it’s one I gave. Last year I went to my grandma’s very most favorite store (one which I LOATHE) and put up with snotty salespeople insulting me while I searched and searched for something my grandma would love. I put more time and effort into that one gift than I did for anyone else on my whole list. Gave it to her on 12/25. Next month, my credit card statement came in, and on 12/26 she had returned the blouse to the store and had the money put back on my own credit card! WTF? Although I guess, really, yay… money for me. Still a bit of an insult though. Also that same grandma gave me, my mom, and my (now ex) SIL perfume called “Sensual” or some weird shit like that. Umm, thanks grandma?

Best? My son, who was born in December, and had the grace to arrive early, BEFORE my 40th birthday, so I can say I was in my 30’s when he was born.

Worst? A douche bag, given to me by my (now) ex-husband. He said he thought it was a hot water bottle, because my feet were always cold. Hello, electric blanket maybe? Heating pad? Warm freaking socks?? I think it just reminded him of himself.

Worst gift ever – My step-mom gave my sister and I both these horrible plastic watches. We later found out from my brother that she got them free when she bought something nice for herself.

This has resulted in my buying her a gift each year becoming kind of an art form. It has to be super cheap but not anything she can obviously complain about to my father. Last year I topped it all when I bought her a gift made by a double murderer from the Angola Prison Rodeo hobby-craft fair.

Best: I was 10, and my parents gave me a book called Earrings – and on the last page they wrote I could get my ears pierced. I was SO EXCITED I just started crying.
Worst: I’ve got 2 weird ones, 1) My ex-MIL kept all the price tags on everything she gave me… only to me. She took them when she gave anything to other family members. The gifts were fine (fancy soap or candles or bathrobes or something), but always so weird with all the price tags on it. It happened EVERY Christmas. 2) A friend regifted a set of cheap wine glasses to me that she had recently gotten when she got married. Problem – the original gift giver had put the card to the newlyweds INSIDE the box, and my friend never opened them, so when I opened I saw this random card addressed “to the happy couple.” Also, while she knows I like wine, she also knows I already have multiple nice sets of wine glasses. So obviously just cleaning out the gifts.

worst, my grandma was a frequent shopper of the dollar store. we got old toothpaste, shoe bags (?????) and ceramic statues of puppies. i also got a scroll saw ( a power tool ) one year from my parents when i was about 16. a used one. you should have saw my face when i opened the box thinking it was a boom box. epic fail.

best gifts: flying home for christmas with my newborn son to introduce him to my family. best christmas ever.

Worst: A red “sexy” nightie given to me by my grandmother in front of my entire family when I was about 12. While I was opening it, my grandmother said that I was turning into a woman now and it was about time for me to own my very own red sexy nightie. I was mortified. Grandma drank.

Best: One of our first years together (out of 15) my husband and I were beyond broke and couldn’t really afford to get each other gifts. So, every week leading up to Christmas he went to a friend’s house and she taught him how to knit and he made me a scarf. It is the oddest, most jacked up scarf you’ve ever seen, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

My best and worst are kind of mixed too. It was the 70s and Evel Knievel was really popular. I got this cool motorcycle stunt doll. A girl. Everything was purple. It was fabulous. You put her on something and she would take off and do tricks.

My little brother broke his big Christmas gift within hours and my Mom insisted that I let him play with my gift. I told her I didn’t want to because he would break it but she made me anyway. It was broken within an hour. I was so upset that it was broken but mostly I was upset that no one else cared. Just shit out of luck kid. Too bad. That’s what you get for doing what your Mom tells you to do.

Worst Present Ever: Its a toss up! My story is slightly different but similiar to the delusional grandparents theme. My bithday is the 21st so most of my presents were combined gifts, which is another story for another time that I should have seen a counsilor for probably. Anyway, my grandmother, who was a total bitch to me all my life, also sent my a sized 6X jogging suit, along with a lovely pair of fish net stockings for my 14th birthday (and a five dollar bill for Christmas…to which my sister and brother both recieved 10). Keep in mind you could not buy anything for 5 bucks even in 1992. The second candidate would be a lovely homemade candle from my sister-in-law for Christmas in 2005ish…the crappy twist is that she made it in a Y2K champagne flute!

Best Present Ever: My engagement ring…Christmas 2008 or my Popple when I was 8…both were pretty cool!

Worst: Makeup remover wipes from my mother, who threw a massive drunken tantrum because I didn’t weep with gratitude when I opened it. She is also notorious for buying me clothes in the size she prefers me to be, which is about four sizes bigger than I am. And they are always Easter Bunny Vomit pink.

Best: Anything from my husband. You can’t pick your mom, so I’m fucked there, but I picked my spouse carefully. Perhaps he is the best gift ever? Just don’t tell him that.

Best – I get weird about clothes shopping. I just don’t do it much, it makes me uncomfortable for reasons that are too long to go into. I will wear something into the ground and I have to be almost-naked from needing clothes to go shopping for myself. My first Christmas after meeting him, my now-husband went and bought me about ten random pairs of shoes in my size – all different sizes and styles. It was extravagant and silly and it was wonderful.

Worst – Years ago I worked in a room with several cubicles in it at a university. A coworker at Christmas got very personal, very thoughtful gifts for everyone else around me. I didn’t know her very well, we didn’t work on the same project. It wasn’t even remotely weird or strange that she was giving gifts to everybody else the last day before break. I didn’t even notice, until she abruptly came up to me, told me she’d ‘left my gift in her car’ and she’d get it for me after lunch. She came back with a gift-wrapped travel package of Kleenex with Christmas trees on it. And it was opened and several were missing. It was pretty uncomfortable.

Best gift was my husband and I buying the tacky 1979 pinball game that was in the local laundromat when I was little and my Dad and I would play for a few hours every Sunday when we did the laundry (to give my Mom a break but really so we could just go and hang out).

Worst gift was when I was 16 and dating a guy in college who was 2 states away. I told him that I didn’t want anything… he said “Tell me what you want or you are going to get a stupid gift.” I ended-up getting a Styrofoam “worm farm” (kind of like a Styrofoam cooler with holes in it) to raise my own worms for fishing. Ok… it was the worst gift ever… and also one of the best **smile** It also taught me to speak-up (and have others do the same) else they end-up with stupid gifts!!

Best present ever: a night of sleep. My older son was born at Thanksgiving, so he was only a month old for his first Christmas. We stayed at my parents house while visiting them for Chrustmas, and my mom took care of night feedings so I could get a full night’s sleep.

Best present ever.. a bike. We were a poor family of 5 kids. One Christmas morning my mom set up a scavenger hunt to find our present. We found all the clues and finally ended up on our front porch with 5 bikes with bows on them. We were all really excited. I think I was like 7 at the time.

Worst present ever…probably the first Christmas being married. My husband tried to buy me makeup, it all turned bad when I opened up my PURPLE mascara… I wear very light makeup to begin with so that was quite a shock. Then I found out that he spent 70 dollars on this thing. I took it back to the store the next day and bought some clothes.

The best present wasn’t for xmas but Valentine’s day. I was always very anti-hallmark but my ex wanted to get me something so he found this completely ridiculous singing hamster with a cane and top hat that sang “puttin’ on the ritz”. I loved that thing until the kids we eventually had destroyed him.

Worst? Probably my very sweet and well-meaning MIL getting us an “our first christmas together” ornament the year we got married. She didn’t notice that the year printed on it was 2 years before… We didn’t have the heart to tell her so we hung the dang thing up on our tree every year anyway 🙂

Worst: A giant hive-shaped, hard plastic, free-standing, salon style hairdryer when I was 15 or so and totally committed to having long, flat, straightish hair.

Best: A family story with post script. My Dad had a heart attack in his early 60s and was stuck in the hospital at Christmas time. He was upset that he hadn’t gotten my Mom a gift, so he drafted a couple of candy-stripers to canvass the local jewelry stores for him. He wanted earrings to match an emerald and diamond ring he’d gotten her a year or so before to replace the long gone zircon “engagement ring” that was all he could afford at the end of WWII. One of the local jewelers was kind enough to visit Dad in the hospital with an array of earrings from which he selected a beautiful pair with a cluster of small emeralds and diamonds set against a small gold starburst shape. Ironically, they were pierced, and Mom only wore screwbacks, but she never said a word and corrected that pierced ear situation PDQ. Dad was so delighted to be able to surprise my mother that Christmas, and my mother, so touched by trouble he’d gone to in order to please her.

The post script–poignant for me–came a few years later on my birthday. My Mom had died of cancer the year before, and my Dad gave me this small box wrapped in used Christmas paper. Inside I found those earrings, and a permanent reminder of my parents’ abiding love for one another.

Oh, good ones, you guys!
Best Present Ever–When I was 16 our house burned down and we lost every.thing. The next Christmas my dad and my (now husband) boyfriend went in together and bought me a replica pair of large hand-made solid gold earrings made by our jeweler neighbor. I started crying, of course. It wasn’t until much later that my husband told me that they weren’t solid gold, they were gold plated (which made them worth MUCH LESS) but my dad had cheerfully allowed me to believe they had spent a small fortune instead. Still–it was a great moment.. at the time.

Worst Present Ever–Possibly same one. Or the board with a nail sticking out of it, but if you have in-laws who love stupid White Elephant parties, you understand that.

Worst? Easily has to be the desk chair I got from my mom one year. Just what every 12 year old girl wants. But it matched the lovely oak roll top desk she had gotten me earlier in the year. So it was perfect in her logic.

Best: 3rd grade, I got ice skates and a real hockey stick. I had no idea the skates were 2nd hand, but they were all my folks could manage, at the time. I was thrilled beyond belief, just happy to have skates.

Worst: there are two… First, my dear grandma got me a “Disco Around the World” LP, around 1980, when I was clearly into tougher stuff.
The other one was not so long ago. After I spent about $250 on gifts for my brother, SIL and two nephews, they (meaning the SIL) got me 3 flavors of popcorn in a large can (with my football team’s logo on it). Sure, I ate the popcorn, but I hope the $20 didn’t break them.

Best present ever: Getting to spend Christmas with my grandmother a few weeks before she passed.
Worst present ever: It’s a toss-up between the rotten coconut from my parents or the tank top that was big enough for three of me.

One year, worst present, I got a box of poop colored tights. It was bizarre. Like, light, orange-y brown poop and there was something like four pairs in this box.

I think the best present was one year my parents bought themselves new stacking laundry machines and we made a fort out of the box. My mums a decorator so she sewed little curtains and made a rug and everything. Best ever.

Worst: A regular gray sweatshirt with three big fake sunflowers hot glued to the front. One on each nipple and one over the belly button. It was from my Grandmothers strange friend. I had to open it in front of her and then be grateful. A gift AND punishment.

Best present ever: whatever my husband gets me. One year it was a snake bite kit. One year it was DNA earrings and another year it was earrings made from gemstones by CADDISFLY LARVAE. He is awesome and totally gets me. Also, one year, he sent a girl to school in Afghanistan for a year in my name. He’s the best.

My friends and I have found a great way to deal with the issue of terrible gifts. Instead of “Dirty Santa” we play “Dirty Father Time” at our annual New Year’s Eve party. Each person brings the worst gift they received that particular year (and if fortunate enough to not get one, a silly gift that costs less than $5), and it is hilarious and awesome.

I finally started asking people not to get me gifts because everyone around me either thinks they know exactly what I would like (they don’t) or they ask me what I would like and then disregard it. Last year for my birthday, my mom did exactly that. Our phone conversation:
“What would you like for your birthday?”
“Well, I’d really like some money to go toward [thing that was very important to me that I couldn’t save for because I was living hand-to-mouth – this thing also had an expiration date and the only way to get it was with donations].”
Mom, hesitantly: “Oh… well… I’ll think about that…”
She drops the subject. Later in that same conversation: “Oh, I decided I’m going to get you a camera for your birthday! Won’t that be fun for you?”

I’ve never had any interest in photography. In fact, I have fewer than 10 photos on my phone and I only have those because Mom asks for photos of my cat. I have no photo albums, no photos I’ve taken anywhere. Because I’ve never been interested in photography. Guess who loves taking photos? That’s right, Mom.

My dead cat. Still undecided on worst/best, but I felt you would appreciate it. I was 8, and my beloved elderly cat, Fuzzy, had to be put down. I was heartbroken. My grandma felt bad that I was having such a hard time, and saw an ad in the newspaper by an old lady who airbrushes *very realistic* stuffed cats to look like your deceased pet, with the aid of a photograph.

Christmas morning, still filled with grief, I opened my grandma’s present. Fuzzy II popped out, to the general horror of all. You know how when a family member or pet dies, and you sort of expect them to be around still in the back of your mind? Like their favorite chair, or hiding under the piano, or leaping out from around the corner onto your back hissing and biting and scratching (he wasn’t a nice cat)? That Christmas, everyone kept moving Fuzzy II around to Fuzzy I’s favorite spots. You’d walk by (chair piece of garbage moose wreath Fuzzy napping by the heater hey it’s snowing again what’s for dinner?), confident that everything was as it should be, then stop dead moments later with cold shivers down your spine. The only nap Fuzzy is taking is a dirt nap behind the garden, and the only thing in the house is the abomination.

Anyway, it was good fun freaking each other out. I still move him around in the night when someone is staying over, so they wake up to Fuzzy II’s unblinking yellow stare. My husband won’t allow him in the bedroom or bathroom. I’ve had three landlords try and tell me off for breaking the No Pets policy.

Best ever: My Barbie Townhouse. It was either the late 70’s or early 80’s, so it had one of those elevators you made go up and down with string, but my Barbies and single Ken didn’t mind. I played with that thing until it fell apart. It went great with my brother’s Castle Greyskull and He-Man characters.
Worst ever: It was a secret santa gift, and those all suck – but I got two of those blowhorn things and a plastic figurine horse. WTF? It was like the person threw random in a bag and said, “Here ya go!” I actually brought a cool present…..Mr Bill, and I got stuck with that. Que sera sera!

Worst: My grandmother always bought my step-cousin and me the same outfit in different colors. The one that sticks out is a pair of corduroy pants and a flowery western-ish shirt. One of us got pink, the other blue.

Best: The first Christmas my then-boyfriend and I were together, our dogs went missing in the middle of December. His came back three days later, mine didn’t. For two weeks, every day I came home from work and still no Spike, I’d go in the bedroom to cry. It was so bad, he was letting me open early Christmas gifts to cheer me up. “Stop crying, here’s a Monty Python series box set.” Christmas Day, I went to my parent’s. When I got home, he met me at the door and made me close my eyes because he’d gotten me a surprise. When I opened them, there was Spike. He had been spotted a couple of times in an area so we’d left his bed there for him. BF took a chance and looked while I was gone and found Spike curled up in the bed. No wonder I married that man. 🙂

Best: My first Cabbage Patch doll, which I still have. I had just turned seven. My parents didn’t label our gifts that year. Instead, each of us had presents wrapped in a different type of wrapping paper. Before Christmas, I asked which color was mine, and they lied to me, and I thought my BROTHER was getting a Cabbage Patch doll! (The box had a very distinctive shape, so I knew SOMEONE was getting one.) I was ECSTATIC come Christmas morning, when my parents started handing me the red & gold packages instead of the red & green ones. I don’t even remember the other presents!

Worst: A few years ago, my grandmother gave me one of those wind-up emergency radios, with some Jesus-y slogan on it. She got it by donating money to a televangelist. She donated so much money that ALL her grandchildren got one of those dumb radios for Christmas that year.

Best and worst (same year as high schooler): Every year without fail a beloved aunt would give me a new sweater (probably because I stopped writing to “santa” and telling her what I wanted), and this particular year I opened..yes…another sweater. My mother, by contrast, opened an envelope with a card and a check for $500.

Get this: SHE COMPLAINED AND CALLED IT THE WORST GIFT EVER. Why? “Because I didn’t get to open anything. It was just a check.”

Okay, so my first big adventure away from home at age 20 and I am living in Seattle with two of my friends. My parents sent this HUGE care package with Christmas gifts in it and there are three wrapped presents, one for each of us. They open theirs first. Present 1 is a teddy bear. Present 2 is a teddy bear. There seems to be a theme here so it’s my turn and I open mine to discover a giant scary clown that freaks us all out. I have been terrified of clowns ever since the movie Poltergeist. I threw it across the room and everyone laughed trying to figure out the reasoning behind that hellish nightmare of a gift other than clearly my parents hated me, lol.

Worst gift was when my brother gave me DVDs (I know it doesn’t sound so bad) they were the movies I let him borrow throughout the year and one box was destroyed because his dog chewed it up. He gave my mom all her casserole dishes back… My mom and I are expecting the same thing this year…

Best: Spousal Unit sneakily took off the day before my birthday to clean house and buy gifts for me. I came home to a clean house for my day off (I would have spent my whole birthday cleaning otherwise), and I got to enjoy the gifts on my birthday. It was more than a full day of sheer joy and bliss at his thoughtfulness.

Worst: My grandma bought me a bra. I was two.

I don’t remember that, of course, but I think it still tops her yard sale gifts with 25-cent stickers still attached.

My dad got me a log when I was 8. Literally wrapped a log that would have gone into the fireplace and built it up as the best gift I was ever going to get, wouldn’t let me open it until all the other presents were opened…..and it was a log. 20 years later we still all agree it was the best. But I’m pretty sure it ended up in the fire later that day…..

Worst: A romantic sex-play game from the bible book store. Sample card: Pray togther and thank God for your healthy bodies and marriage. Give each other sensual massages and make love. I’m an Atheist. It was from my Catholic mother-in-law.

Best: Theatre tickets from/with my sis. She would spring for a subscription for six shows, then do two with me, and two with each of her daughters-in-law, so it was a fun thing AND time to spend together, dinner before the show, etc. Wicked, Lion King, Young Frankenstein, Legally Blonde… we saw a lot of great shows.

Worst: toss-up between Chia pets (If I’d kept them all, I could have an entire Chia nursery) and a supposed knife sharpener made out of plastic.

Worst: My estranged, schizophrenic mother violated our restraining order to leave a festively wrapped box on the porch. Inside? Partially-used cosmetics, stolen clothes wreathed in cat hair, and what appeared to be the contents of her kitchen trash.

It’s the thought that counts, but I would rather some people didn’t think of me. Like, at all.

I think they are one in the same in my case. One year my little sister got a furbee from a family friend. She loved it to death. Everyone else hated it with a passion. Especially since it talked All. Night. Long. My mom told us later it got thrown away one night while it was hidden under the couch to muffle the noise.

It was funny, too, because that family friend had just been talking about how the best gifts to give were the most annoying…. He sure succeeded.

Best present ever, without a doubt, was my guinea pig Wilbur (yes, named after the pig from Charlotte’s Web) who I got for Christmas when I was 10. I loved that pig. He was the world’s smartest guinea pig. He responded to about 15 different words, and loved to watch TV with me. His favorites were Who Wants to be a Millionaire (with Regis Philbun) and NHL hockey. He also would sometimes pretend to be an egg which was hilarious.
I don’t really know if I have a worst present. Maybe the time the boy I liked in high school gave me earrings for my birthday but I didn’t have pierced ears. It kinda hurt my feelings that he didn’t notice, but then again, that was a popular gift in high school and most girls had pierced ears. I just don’t like needles.

When I was in my goth/punk phase I got a bright yellow polo shirt, so I feel your pain. Only I didn’t have the tags to return it so I just donated it to Goodwill a couple years later.

Best gift ever was tickets to see the Foo Fighters. I had to move a surgery date back, and my family (other than hubby who bought the tickets) thought I was insane. I figured it was worth it since Foo Fighters songs were how I was getting through the pre-surgery panic and anxiety attacks. (See “On the Mend”, “Times Like These”, etc.) Great show, and totally gave me a boost of confidence and happiness to take into surgery.

Best present: a totally unexpected Nintendo from my non-tech-savvy parents in the mid-80s.

Worst present: a grocery store candle that smelled like a grandma and a used Pretty Women DVD from a dude I’d just started dating.

The day after my grandmother passed away, her brother told everyone in the family that no one, under any circumstances, should ever give him a caramel cake ever again. Apparently she’d been making him one on his birthday for more than 50 years because it was his “favorite.” He didn’t have the heart to tell her or anyone else that he hated them. I’m guessing that good-hearted homemade cake from his sister was probably his best/ worst present every year.

Worst: almost every bit of clothing Mom bought me during my high-school and college years. She sold mens’ clothes in a big department store and if it looked even remotely passable on a mannequin she thought it would look good on me (and/or my 2 brothers). More often than not, it didn’t. The so-called latest fashion is not my thing, though I do get beyond khakis and polo shirts often enough.
Best: my wife. We got engaged around Christmas time in ’97 in Ireland. Surprised the heck out of my future in-laws when we told them on Christmas eve. And my own Mom almost as much when I got home a week later.

My best present ever was my very own horse when I was 12. A REAL LIVE HORSE FOR A 12 YEAR-OLD GIRL!!! I know, right?

My worst present ever was my Christmas present from one of my six cats last year. One of them went on a cross-house vomiting spree to rid themselves of a hairball. It started in the kitchen and went through the foyer, into the living room (including a brief stop on the sofa), up the stairs, into the bathroom and ended with a giant, cold squishy hairball right outside my door. I found it by stepping in it with bare feet. I then had to trace the path back before I could safely walk through the house with socks on. Christmas morning for the single woman with six cats. Ho fucking ho.

Best present ever: In junior high, after everyone finished unwrapping presents, my dad sat us all down and asked if we would like another cat. (We had 3 cats and a dog at this point) My first question? “Did you ask mom?” That kitten ended up being my shadow until I moved out, a friend when I felt like I had no other, and I miss her dearly.

Worst present ever: My sister gave my husband and I a bag of baby shower confetti. The year before we got married and 3 years before I was even pregnant. Awkward!

Best present ever: Last year, I asked for a bunch of books (what else is new). My husband picked one off the list, and gave it to me on Christmas morning. Inside, there was an inscription that read:

“Your Christmas wishlist is boring. You should ask for more interesting things, like a chance to jump out of an airplane.
… No, really, you should have asked for that, because that’s what I got you for Christmas this year. A voucher to use at that skydiving place.”

Worst present ever: A few years ago, when I was in college and my younger sister was in maybe 8th grade-ish, an aunt sent us a joint gift. Inside: one pack of post-it notes and one pair of socks. We’re still not sure, to this day, how exactly we were supposed to divide that up (for giggles, we each took one sock and a stack of post-its). To add insult to injury, she’d spelled my sister’s name wrong on the label.

Best: 1972 a Navy pea coat. I slept with it every night for two weeks. No, I didn’t wear it. I just slept with it.

Worst (but later best): Same year, 1972. My best friend thought it might be funny to give me a copy of The Happy Hooker. It might have been funny had my very straight laced, uptight parents not been sitting right in front of me. I was 16. Are you shitting me? I’m lucky I lived to tell the tale.

Worst Present Ever – cheap novelty plate (dollar store) with a little boy and his teddy bear playing hockey on it. I don’t like hockey, play hockey, collect plates or have a child … and I’m 100% sure the family member (who shall not be named) forgot to get me a gift and just re-gifted something in their closet…they DID go out of their way for my brother though.

Best: I always joked with my husband that he owed me a pink pony for all the work I do for him. Since he couldn’t find one, he found a stuffed pony and spray painted it pink.

Worst: My crazy uncle bought me the ugliest necklace I have ever seen: the cord was neon-pink rubber and the pendant was a stamp enclosed in acrylic. Not a pretty stamp, just a standard liberty bell type stamp. It was also about 8″ long and might have fit my wrist. I was sixteen and somewhat baffled. The same year, he gave my recovered-bullimic mother a diet book.

My best and worst present is combined. I was 8 and my Grandma decided she was going to take my brother who is older than I am and my older cousin to Disneyland in California during Christmas break from school. We were the only grandchildren living in the same state as her at the time, but I was considered too young to come on this trip. She ruled the roost in my extended family so my parents nor my Grandpa said anything about my exclusion. My Great Aunt, my Grandpa’s sister however heard about these plans and took me on vacation to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. I was fascinated, still am, with caves so this was a GREAT trip for me, and I wasn’t at all upset on missing out on the Disney trip. I miss my Aunt but she gave me great memories.

Worst present ever: a Christmas tree. For my birthday. My birthday is right before Christmas, but still…

Best present ever: Spending Christmas with my daughter. She’s been in the hospital, and ICU a lot, and at one point it wasn’t clear whether we’d have any more Christmases together, so each one is precious.

My brother’s worst present, ever, was a giant car decal that looked like a zipper. The year before, he’d gotten a book on knot-tying. He wasn’t a Boy Scout.

worst is a tie. my now-dead grandma (former prostitute with a heart of coal) once gave me four styrofoam balls, each about the size of a ping-pong ball. Perhaps they would have made the best list if accompanied by one of your guns. that is tied with the year my husband gave me pictures printed off the internet of what he would have liked to gift if only he had been better at budgeting his money.

Best Present Ever: This wasn’t for a birthday or christmas, or any holiday, but it was in honor of the first paycheck from my current job. My second wife (it took me two tries to get it right) told me to take that paycheck and spend it on myself, getting whatever I wanted with it.

Worst Present Ever: That was a maroon shower curtain that my first wife (see, told you it took me two tries!) gave me for Christmas because she wanted to have a new shower curtain for the main bathroom.

@Claire, there are other body parts you could pierce if you didn’t want to pierce your ears but still wanted to honor the gift, and before everyone else yells “nipples*,” let me just say that it doesn’t have to be.

*Because, face it, everybody loves to yell “nipples!” every now and again.

Best Present ever: Marshmallow guns (similar to your burp guns). I got them for my young niece and nephews, who then immediately starting shooting tiny marshmallow everywhere (including one of their mother’s foreheads). I’m pretty sure my mother-in-law was finding marshmallows all over her house for months after that. I also got a bigger gun for my 23 year-old brother…it was just as much a hit with him as the 8 year-olds.

Worst Gift Ever: When I turned 13, my dad though a brown flannel shirt is exactly what I wanted for my birthday. He and my mom had a bet who’s present would go over the best. Needless to say, he lost.

BEST: When I was in my 20s I got a giant box of various types of bubble wrap from my BFF. It was awesome and creative when we did Christmas on a very small budget. She knew I loved to pop it, especially when I needed to try to calm my anxiety.

WORST: A few years ago I got a cardigan sweater with cardinals and beads appliqued on it. UM, I’m not even 40, so I’m certainly not ready for a sweater that I think I saw on a 90-something year old woman.

Worst present: when I was 13 or so, my grandma gave me this pair of metallic silver LA Gear tennis shoes. They were the ugliest effing shoes I’ve ever seen. She said the ladies she knew (all around her age) were wearing them. Awesome.

Best present: My daughter was born two days after Xmas. She’s the most spunky, quirky, and nerdy little girl. 🙂

Best – The birthday when I turned 14, it was just my mom and I and we didn’t have a lot of money, so my mom gave me the gift of setting my own bed time. I had always been a night owl and hated going to bed at “X” time. Of course, the caveat was that if I started having trouble getting up in the morning or my grades slipped, it was taken away, but I thought that was the coolest thing ever. It was the last birthday gift she gave me before she died and I still remember it the most.

Worst – Hubbie’s late step-grandmother always sent the girls in the family the same things for Christmas – we would get unique colors, but the items were always the same. Every year was unique, but the most memorable: A generic BIC pen, a plastic shower cap and ONE pillowcase. The funniest thing – there were three girls (Mom-in-law, Sis-in-law and me) and it was obvious that two of the pillowcases had been a set. We always wondered what happened to the fourth pillowcase. Perhaps she kept it for herself.

Best present ever is hard to pick just one – my husband has a real knack for getting me something I didn’t know I wanted that turns out to be exactly what I wanted.

Worst present would have to be anything from my husband’s maternal grandmother. Her idea of “shopping” for Christmas presents is to go through the rooms full of “stuff” she has hoarded over her lifetime & give all the grand-kids something from her collection. Often it is undated & unlabeled mystery preserves – jars of strange colored substances that bear little resemblance to actual edibles, that are thrown out (jars & all) as soon as Granny’s back is turned.

I’ve had a couple really memorable Christmas gifts. When I was 4 or 5 I received a cow girl costume with a hat, vest, boots, and guns. I wore that almost every day. When I was 13 I received a phone for my bedroom. Prior to that there was only a corded phone in the kitchen and everyone could hear me pour out my teenage angst to my best friend.

The worst gift was probably underwear from my parents. The huge disappointment as a child to open the package and get underwear. I would then have to hold up these huge granny panties and show everyone what I got. There are pictures of several years of panty pictures. Those years my brothers got fun things so it wasn’t like there wasn’t money. My parents just couldn’t be bothered to find out what I wanted.

Best present I ever gave was to my little brother. I had taken his N64 with me to college, and he mentioned missing it. So, on Xmas, he had a few packages from me. Unassisted in the order of opening, he unwrapped the games, controllers, then the console.

Worst Present- Our family would draw names so everyone wouldn’t have to buy everyone a present. I rigged the drawing to make sure my husband would get my name because I know he’s a crappy gift giver. Christmas comes and he gives me a pretty big box. I thought, “Maybe this is the year he got it right!!” I opened it to find two teddy bear cookie jars, both exactly alike. He’s sitting beside me and says proudly, “It’s a matching pair of bears!” with a stupid grin on his face. Worst. Present. Ever. Then he had the balls to be mad at ME for not liking it.
Best Present- My She-Ra castle and doll I got when I was a kid. The castle had an ELEVATOR!!!

Best: An authentic Burberry trench my husband found on eBay for next to nothing. I had mentioned once in passing I wanted one, but we could never afford one, and he scoured until he found it and surprised me with it years later. Not only do I love the coat, but the thoughtfulness was amazing.

Worst: Not a present perse, but one year in family history is dubbed the Christmas Bloodbath, and that would be the worst Christmas morning in family history. Early Christmas morning, one year when I was a kid, my father had a particularly vivid dream he was being buzzed by a fly and lerched his head into the corner of his 1980s clock radio and began bleeding profusely all over. He passed out from the blood. My mother, seeking to get a towel to staunch the bleeding, stood up too quickly and also passed out. I, a child, hearing commotion and wondering if it was Santa, wandered into the bloody mess with two groggy/passed out parents. It was as if Santa had attacked my family. In retrospect it was actually pretty funny. Our funniest Christmas memory was the year grandma forgot her teeth.

Best Present: Everyone in my family gave me money for travel, because I was going to see Phish in NYC at Madison Square Garden for their “return from hiatus” NYE concert in 2002 (I lived outside of Chicago). My mom wrapped up single 20s in a bunch of random boxes, so I thought they were regular gifts and they ended up being cash.

Worst Present: The guy that was supposed to get me the Phish ticket totally gave it away to a girl he was trying to impress. I didn’t get to go.

Worst present ever: my ex husband bought me an apron, it was before we were even married. That should have been a big heads up.

Best present ever: when I was 11 I wanted a typewriter, and my mom gave it to me, but she made me wait until the very end of opening presents to see the box, and I thought I wasn’t getting it. Then it appeared and I was over the moon. It was a little Smith Corona, probably should kept that, it’s vintage now.

Best: My father converted my toybox (which he built for me with his grandfather when I was 2) into a hope chest (re-did the finish, added a lid, added my name on the front in big letters). I got it when I was…24? I cried.

Worst: A camel-shaped puzzle box. I don’t have a single camel thing in my home, I had never said anything about liking camels…

Incidently, both presents were from my brother. His presents tend to be hit or miss. Of course, when I got the Tauntaun, I had sent him a link with the heading: I WANT THIS FOR CHRISTMAS PLEASE AND THANK YOU. That didn’t necessarily mean that is what he was going to give me.

Best and worst are the same – my then partner bought me a washing machine for Xmas – the only reason it was the best was because we had been without a washing machine for most of my then, 13 month olds life. He told he could have bought it in September but then I wouldn’t have had a Christmas gift. Needless to say we seperated.

The best present was given at a family Christmas party that my then-fiance took me to. He didn’t tell them I was coming, and so I was the only one there who had no gift under the tree and was the only one who didn’t speak Spanish. I knew no-one and couldn’t talk to anyone…but then they handed me a little gift bag with sample soaps, a new mascara, a chocolate bar, and a little Santa figure–they had searched the house for anything they could find that would fit in the bag so that I would have a gift, and it’s one of the sweetest gestures I’ve ever received.

The worst present has to be the fake-flowers-floating-in-a-glass-tube-filled-with-water that my then-husband bought from a street vendor when he realized on the way home from work that it was our anniversary.

Best present ever: my boyfriend had spent weeks hand-crafting a beautiful chest. It’s like a beautiful little pirate’s chest. That wasn’t all though. He said it was a chest for us to store our memories together, and the inside was coated with pictures of us that I never even knew existed. Some were candid, love-gazing shots. He also taped inside a funny love ballad he had written for me which was too inappropriate for him to actually play at shows or around friends or family.
Worst present: That same chest, because then I married the guy and now we’re split up and it just sits there, taunting me.

My worst list is endless…and it hasn’t helped me improve my gift giving ability so I would like to send an apology out to the universe for everyone I have ever bought for. That would be a good blog post- presents you gave that you know sucked dirty balls. I could give examples.
Best- diamond ring from my hubby. I told him it bought him a few more years of marriage 😉
Worst- a safe. I didn’t own ANYTHING of value. My parents bought it for me and got my hubby a video game system and new computer chair. He was ecstatic. Prick.

The worst present ever turned into the best present years later. My dad bought me a stereo system with a turntable, radio, two tape players, and speakers. The only problem was that I was a preteen and had an entire list of toys that I didn’t get and really wanted. Tears ensued, and my dad put a hole in the bedroom door. The moral: get the kid what she wants, not what you want to buy her. Even if you think what she wants is crappy, it’s what she really wants.

the best present: my family used to own a cabin outside of aspen, colorado. we went there every christmas. the last year my older brother was alive, we spent christmas at home (my younger brother and i both worked retail jobs, and couldn’t take time off until after the holidays). and then we went to the cabin for a week. i don’t remember fighting with my brothers once. and we fought a lot because i like to argue and they’re stupid. it was one of those perfect family moments. everybody loved everybody for being exactly who they are.

Best present: My boyfriend had my two best friends decorate a pair of Chuck Taylors for me.
Worst present: High school boyfriend gave me the world’s ugliest, lowest quality, floppy stuffed dog. I’m not a stuffed animal kind of girl.

Oh! And the best/worst present ever given in my family: My nephew was not doing as well as he should’ve been doing in high school. My politcally incorrect father started referring to him as tard. My dad (well, he had me do it) had a baseball hat that said “tard” across the front. I then wrapped it in my empty Wii box. This was the year the Wii had just come out, so when he unwrapped the box, he thought he was getting on.

It was probably his worst present ever, but my dad, my sisters and I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. My mom and brother-in-law didn’t find it quite as funny as we did, though.

Best present ever — Probably the iPad. I really wanted one and my hubby wrapped an old iPad box and filled it rocks. I was a little peeved and then he handed me a giant box with the ipad inside.

Worst — Its a tie, either the Football themed sleeping bag when I was 8, I am female and love ballet. I cried. Or the purse from my estranged MIL that had used kleenex in it. That was last year. Not entirely the reason she is estranged, but definitely a catalyst.

Best Christmas present ever was me deciding I was allowed to celebrate Christmas after growing up in a religion that didn’t celebrate it and being that weird kind in class who couldn never do any of the holiday stuff…

I see lots of worst gifts that I would love! Ie: footie jammies! I love them!!

I don’t really have any worst gifts as I’m pretty grateful for any gift I get as it means someone took the time out to think of me. However, my poor dad, has got to be the worst gift giver ever. He tries, bless his heart, but *sigh*, he really is clueless. He usually shops at the thrift stores (nothing wrong with that), but, I swear, I don’t know what he’s thinking. Last year, I received a fuzzy black and white leopard type coat that makes me look twice my size, which is really unnecessary, thank you very much. And gifts are usually wrapped in the plastic bags they came in. Lol

My best gifts, all come from my husband. The first one from him, was a a framed picture of my Nagymama (grandmother). She had passed away quite a few years earlier, and I already had the picture of her, but no frame. Hubby had it framed beautifully for me and I had no clue. I promptly burst into tears upon opening it.

Last years gift was my new Canon 1Dx. That one I really wasn’t expecting, as it was the first year I didn’t ask for any camera gear. I had been drooling over the camera for months, but figured it was a pipe dream and didn’t even bother asking. He surprised me with that one.

Best present: Probably a tie between my engagement ring from my husband who made me seriously depressed before proposing by telling me for about a half hour that he wasn’t going to propose to me because he couldn’t afford a ring. The other gift was a PSP from my autistic twin brother which was only awesome because that year for Christmas he had told my mom that he was going to get a gift for everyone (I’m one of six kids and usually we just pick one name we get a present for) and come Christmas morning he had only bought a gift for me, one other brother, and my mom because, “Those are the people I like.”

Worst present was when my cheap brother gave me a bobble head doll that he got for free from a minor league baseball game he went to. I don’t even like baseball.

Best/sweetest present ever: 1973: After suffering a ruptured ectopic [first] pregnancy in the late summer, my younger brother and his wife gave me a Raggedy Ann Doll for Christmas, so I would have a baby to hold. Big weeps.

Worst present ever: The very next Christmas, I had requested a ‘point and shoot’ camera. My photographer husband, after learning his best friend wanted to upgrade his old camera, BOUGHT THE BEST FRIEND a brand new 35mm SLR camera and GAVE ME THE FRIEND’S OLD, USED 35mm SLR camera. Worse than the Christmas the hubs gave me my very own tool box (he is an only child and never learned to share).

Best: I had discovered an interest in netsuke in my early twenties, and my mother asked what they were. After I explained, a little light came on and she said she thought she had bought one while hiking in the Appalachians. Sure enough, it was an old, small netsuke. The next year she gave it to me.

Worst: Haven’t had many bad ones, but one Xmas I bought a pearl bracelet and paired it with ancient pearl/gold earrings that had belonged to my grandmother, for my fiance. A week later she revealed to me that she had been having an affair with a married guy at work, and asked me to move out. And she never have me back the pearls. At least she should have returned the earrings, don’t you think?

Best: My boyfriend wandered through Walmart on Christmas Eve and bought the first 6 things he saw that reminded him of me. Mostly practice items (A book, a sports bra, a button-up shirt and some other odds and ends) but it was pretty adorable for reasons I don’t totally understand.

Worst present ever: a pink fleece blanket with a giant picture of a puppy on it, from one of those generic gift catalogs…when I was in my 20’s…no thanks Mom! Luckily it made a great gift for my co-worker’s daughter.

Best present ever: horseback riding lessons! I’d been begging for them for years and my Dad finally came through for me!

Best: A copy of my favorite book as a kid, “Molly’s Moe”. It was a book about a little girl named Molly and her stuffed stegosaurus, Moe. I checked it out of the library every week for about a year when I was 4 or 5, but I never actually owned it. It is out of print now, but a few years ago my parents found me a copy online. (Second best is probably the Moe my mom made me for Christmas when I was 5)

Worst: The stomach bug my sister in law brought from Louisiana two Christmases ago. My whole family was at my house for Christmas, and we all got sick. We refer to it as The Great Christmas Plague of 2011. No one in my family has asked to have Christmas at my house since.

Best: My daughter who is 19 bought me a state of the art laptop because ” I never get anything new and she gets everything” Her words. . .what a kid :). Worst: My Mom forgot my birthday card and then told me it only had a lottery ticket in it anyway. I still haven’t gotten it. 🙂

My best present? Ooooh, hard to choose… It’s a tie between the rollerblades I got for my can’t-remember-which-one-but-not-my-ninth-for-reasons-I’ll-tell-later birthday; I actually found them by accident a week before my birthday in the storage room while looking for something else. I had to suppress my joy for a WHOLE WEEK and pretend to be surprised when I got to open it. Don’t know I managed to pull it off – and the Wii I got from my friends and their mother one Christmas when in my twenties. Those are the two presents that stick out the most in my mind when I think of AWESOME PRESENT YAY memories. I think the rollerblades win by a narrow margin.

Worst present? That is EASY. Growing up, we were pretty poor, not helped by my father’s terrible way with money. So I never expected big presents – which was why the aforementioned rollerblades were AWESOME – or more than one really.

On my ninth birthday – see, I told you I’d come back around to that – my father presented me with a boxlike present. First I thought “Book! =D” but when I ripped off the paper it was… a computer game box. I think my brain melted a little in ecstasy. A computer game! For ME!! I soon realised that it was actually one of my big brother’s old games but I didn’t care; I was so happy and was bubbling over with it as I gabbled my effusive thanks to my dad, opened up the box and–

Out fell bottles of shampoo and conditioner. My father. Had given. His NINE YEAR OLD daughter. SHAMPOO. AND CONDITIONER. He’d used the box to make it easier to wrap. I tried to cover up my disappointment but I think he noticed when I went from 60 to 0 in two seconds. And that was all I got from him that birthday. I think I’d have preferred nothing or just a card.

Best: A microscope set when I was maybe 10. (nerd alert) I could make my own slides with dead bugs and cells from the inside of my cheek. I was in heaven.

Worst (but also kind of amazing): The aunt of my boyfriend (at the time) was frugal (Depression era) and frequently re-used empty boxes of cereal for xmas gifts. So I was not surprised when I unwrapped a box of Corn Pops for Christmas one year. I was more surprised by the fact that it was just that, a box of Corn Pops. She was also suffering from dementia, but I suspect she meant it as I was never her favorite.

Best: Wooden sled and white teddy bear. They were almost impossible to find the year (1974 or 75 ish) I requested them both from Santa. Apparently the largest sled manufacturer had burned down that year. Seriously. And white teddy bears were very, very, very uncommon but I had to have one because of some weird movie they showed us at school. My dad (aka Santa, who took his duty as Santa VERY seriously) found an expensive boutique downtown and got the white bear. The sled… well that is a story of legend. It was Christmas Eve and “Santa” was DESPERATE. I believe he was in Montgomery Wards. He saw the perfect sled. Wooden with red runners. A thing of beauty. Hanging from the ceiling with happy child mannequins riding it down a Christmas display! Wheee! He grabs a clerk and asked to buy it.
Clerk: “I’m sorry sir, that’s a display.”
My dad was undaunted, “Yes, I know, take it down, I want to buy that sled.”
Clerk: “I can’t do that.”
Dad: “Get a manager.”
Clerk: “Sir, we’re closing in 15 minutes.”
Dad: “Manager. Now.”
Manager: “Sir, I’m sorry but we can’t sell the display.”
Dad: “Ok, go in the back and get me one.”
Manager: “We’re sold out sir.”
Dad: “Look, the day after Christmas you’re gonna come in here and rip this display down. I want that sled.”
Manager: “But sir!”
Dad (getting louder): “This is a STORE? You do SELL things here, right!?!?”
Manager: “Well, yes, of course.”
Dad: “I want that sled.” (apparently he was a bit menacing at this point)
Manager to Clerk: “Get it down.”
As my dad walked through the store with my precious sled he was approached repeatedly by other customers demanding to know where he got the sled. He told them to ask the manager. BEST. PRESENT. EVER.

Worst: The year that my parents decided I was too old for dolls and I did NOT receive the Thumbilina doll I had asked Santa for. I was crushed. I have no idea what I actually did get that year besides a hole in my heart where my belief in Santa used to be.

Best: a ukulele my boyfriend bought me after a particularly awesome Nellie McKay concert. He even went out of his way to get me one made by my favorite guitar maker instead of just picking up whatever happened to be at Guitar Center.

Worst: a broken camera and incomplete set of alphabet stamps gifted to me when I was around ten years old by my step-father’s brother and then-wife. I was actually insanely excited about the camera until I tried to use it and figured out it was broken.

worst: my birthday is a few days before Christmas, so it tends to get lumped into people’s minds as one, so any time someone gave me a present and said, “happy birthday *and* merry christmas!” goes on my permanent shit list and has been banished from my memory. Assholes.

best: I actually graduated from college on my birthday one year; first woman in my family with a college degree! my family has a tradition of reading the ‘Jesus Story’ from the Bible (the story of his birth), and my grandfather usually reads it. That year, he made a big speech about how proud he was of me, and he passed the Bible to me and asked me to read it that year. Such a warm memory for me.

I’m going with a “worst” present that my sister got. She got a life-sized inflatable emperor penguin one year. It was seriously hilarious, but she was terrified of it. Which, of course, I found even more hilarious. And my parents managed to position it right under a heating vent so when the heat cycled on in the middle of the night, it would move.

For best present, it was a birthday gift. My boyfriend at the time surprised me with two tickets to see Jon Stewart live. I’d gone to get tickets a month earlier, saw the line, said “eff it” in my head and gave up on the idea. The show was the day after my birthday, so it was a huge surprise when I opened my card and they fell out.

Best Present Ever: The whole extended family got together and got me dinosaur everything. Dinosaur shirt, dinosaur mug, dinosaur muffin tray… it was amazing. (I was also 21)

Worst Present Ever: Mum was right into Nutrimetics and had bought all this shampoo/conditioner/body lotion that she was meant to sell, but she got lazy about it and they all went out of date, so she said I could have what she had left for $50. I paid $50 for out of date shampoo from my mum.

Best gift ever: Tickets to see Twelfth Night on Broadway with my best friend, front row, on-stage seating, and getting to meet my hero Stephen Fry.
Worst gift ever: My ninth birthday, super excited that my rich aunt who hardly ever spoke to us had sent me a card with a large check, then confusion and heartbreak when I realize that it’s not made out to me, but to Weight Watchers.

When I was in kindergarten, Grandma Wilma bought me a stuffed dog. He was medium brown with dark brown floppy ears that squeaked when you squeezed them. I, being an imaginative child, named him Brownie. Brownie slept with me every night and went on all of our family trips to Chicago and Detroit with me. Over the years he lost his tongue, his nose, the white-with-green-polka-dots tie around his neck, and the ability to squeak in one ear. I kept him, but he was shuffled away with all of the old toys at my mom and dad’s house.

Twenty years later, I moved across the country with two suitcases of clothes and nothing else. A after that, I asked my sister and mother to mail my stereo to me. They were adding items like spare dish towels and some of my clothes that I hadn’t taken with me to the box for padding. My niece, five at the time, asked what they were doing. When they explained, she ran and got Brownie and threw him in the box. “Auntie will want him! I bet she misses him!” This was all explained to me when I called my sister after I opened the box. There may have been tears and stuffed animal hugs after I hung up.

Brownie doesn’t sleep with me anymore, but he does sit on the table next to my bed.

Worst – Anything that comes from my husband’s aunt. She is a hoarder so it’s always something that she has grabbed off the top of the pile. My personal favorite was actually a wedding gift from her. It was cheap plastic wine glasses that were $2 that came complete with dead spiders inside and a used air filter.

Best – This year we get to tell our families that after 3+ years of fertility treatments we are finally having a baby.

Best – That’s really hard. I have had a lot of best’s. I guess it’s hard to surprise me, I remember almost everything I tell people. My husband tries really hard, I got a gorgeous Necklace of Emerald and white gold shaped into a sea turtle, one of a kind – my husband designed it. Although, we never make it to the actual day for the gift, he always gives things to me early.
Oh- I do have to give props to my crazy ex-MIL. She bought me a scarf one year and I had no clue it was a Pashmina- I loved that damn scarf. I wore it for YEARS, even after the divorce and new marriage. I cried when I lost it. My now husband has tried to replace it several times and we just can’t find quite the same thing.

Worst – I’m not sure. I get stuff I’m pretty sure my SIL knows I don’t care about at all. I don’t wear much jewelry, just what my hubby buys. I did get a bracelet for Christmas from my parents friends one year and though it was nice, I HAD ONE EXACTLY LIKE it from my parents the year before. I tried to explain and my mom wouldn’t listen. Finally, I wore both one day and my mom was like- “Where did you get that??” Ah, the joy of telling your mother she is clueless.

Best Present Ever: Several years ago, my son (23/24 at the time I think) dug through old photos and contacted grandma for more old photos and presented me with a frame with 4 pictures in it 1) me preggers with him, 2)me an him in the pool when he was about 3 months old, 3)me and him when he was around 8 and 4)me and him from the previous year at a family Christmas party – he told his siblings “I won cuz I made Mom cry”.

Worst ever: a dress that was 3 sizes too small, no tag, and smelled vaguely of the goodwill store – not saying who that came from

Best gift: a pair of jeans from my (now) husband. We’d only been dating a short while when he gave them to me. I told him there was no way they’d fit, but I was wrong. Perfect fit with a turquoise (my birthstone) button. He said he knew they were meant for me. At that point in my life, I don’t think anyone had ever given me a gift that was purely about me. The jeans are long gone, but I still have the button. 🙂
Worst: my GGma handed me a pair of underwear & said “I picked these up for you on sale. I’m sure they’re big enough”. I literally UNFURLED a pair of granny panties that could have covered half of my car’s windshield. I politely thanked her & laughed all the way home.

Best present ever: When my parents and my husband’s parents (who was my boyfriend at the time) flew him to see me in Estonia where I was doing the Peace Corps and I missed him dreadfully and also had not been getting laid at all…which is good considering I had a boyfriend but bad for reasons you might understand.

Worst present ever: I once submitted a wish list to my parents fully written out with item descriptions and pictures. The same year my sister just willy nilly mentioned things that she though she might like. She received each and every one of those haphazardly mentioned items. I received a duplicate of each of her random wishes, but in a different color. My list was duly ignored. I was twelve.

I puzzled over this and was unable to come with a single candidate for either category. Then I realized that whenever someone gives me a present I am simultaneously grateful for the thought and mortified by the attention. So the best AND worst present someone can give me is…anything. Or nothing.

The basic premise of this gift is that it lasts all year. You buy yourself a box or a jar (I went with a big glass jar with a lid). Inside the jar are 365 strips of paper, each with a memory on it. The person you give the Memory Jar to is allowed read a memory a day. I found that the easiest thing to do was start a Word document of memories…when something would occur to me, I’d jot it down and then add it to my master list. After I had 365, I printed them off and then hand-wrote the memories onto pieces of paper that I folded up and put in the jar. Looking back, I wish I had done the hand-writing in stages as well…I was nearly crippled on December 23rd the year I did this because I had to have a two day marathon of memory writing. It was brutal.

The only problem with this gift? You will never, ever top it. I’m giving my Dad fleece lined Crocs this year…I don’t think they will bring tears to his eyes like the other did.

The best and worst Christmas presents were the at the same time several years ago. About a week before Christmas my husband came home and told me that several checks bounced in our account which meant not only were we broke but along with our other creditors we now owed the bank money, too.

Fortunately for him I already had the Christmas presents purchased for our family and had food for Christmas dinner. Still I was devastated and crawled in bed to deal with it in my head before I could deal with it in reality. While I was in bed he fixed my office chair that had been listing to the side for months that he claimed couldn’t be fixed along with a few other things. It was kind of sad and funny at the same time.

When I came out of the bedroom I told him I was handling the bills and the paying of them from then on and made him give me the bills and the check book. As I was straightening out the mess I came across a bill from the tax department for nearly $500 due the beginning of January. Devastated all over again I went back to him to be told he had ‘forgotten’ about it. I ended up going to my mom to whom I already owed several hundred dollars and borrowed the money from her to pay the bill.

Christmas Day comes and it’s wonderful because in spite of everything I know I’m blessed with my beautiful daughters and things could be worse. So my eldest daughter gives me her gift of a salad bowl from Wendy’s. It is filled with crumpled up twenty dollar bills to the tune of $1000. She knew we’d been having money problems and had gotten a second job so she could help.

I was able to pay the tax bill, pay back my mom and the bank. Really the best present anyone has ever given me. I don’t think I thanked her enough. Every good thing that happens to her she’s more than earned. She’s a really great daughter and wonderful mother to her own daughter which is a pretty damn good present in and of itself.

Worst: I’d asked Santa for a little brother for Christmas and woke up Christmas morning fully expecting to receive one. Instead, I got a ‘My Little Buddy’ doll. Coincidentally, this was the same year that ‘Chucky’ came out. They looked virtually identical. Not only did I not get a little brother, I had that creepy-ass doll staring at me from the corner of the room every night.

Best: Either the time my parents got me my first computer (an Apple IIE) or a TV and recently released Nintendo game system. Both were above and beyond what I’d been expecting. Score, parents.

Best present ever- three years ago, my husband bought me a Kindle. Shameless suck up- I purchased Let’s Pretend It Never Happened so I have access to it at all times for reading out loud to people that really need to read it.
Worst present ever- a few years ago when I was a little on the heavier side (a lot on the heavier side) I never left the house unless swathed in black or gray. My mother purchased me a yellow track suit covered in sequins, the kind favored by elderly ladies in New Jersey. My sister-in-law received the same outfit, I believe hers was orange. Very difficult to choke out a thank you whilst the strain of not laughing was making my nose and eyes run as if I were crying.

Best present ever: crazy magnet toys that we played with after Christmas dinner. Everyone sat at the table for hours. Even after the pie was done.

Worst: I got an empty box one year. My mom had used a box from the year before to store ornaments and then tucked it under the tree when it was empty. She totally forgot and handed it to me. The look on my face must have been priceless.

My best present ever and worst present ever are the exact same items, on the exact same Christmas.

I was the kind of kid who started their Christmas list (meaning ‘list of presents’ to you uninitiated Philistines) in late August, and by the time Christmas rolled around the version that went to Santa was usually version 19 or 20. This was to ensure the list was EXTREMELY CLEAR in conveying the very specific things I wanted that year.

I was about 7 or 8, and I remember my #1 and #2 gifts on the list that year never changed – the list went through so many re-writes and edits and re-orders, but I knew what the priority items were:

1. My own record player.
2. Dumb Ditties (a K-Tel record, heavily advertised on television, comprised of the most insane goofball songs you have ever heard. I wanted it more than I wanted my own eyes and I lost my mind every time the commercial came on.)

So everything was set. The entire world, including Santa, knew what I wanted. That Christmas Eve went the way all our previous ones had, with all my aunts and uncles coming to my house, the last stop on the house-to-house Christmas-visit circuit, and getting seriously, raucously, merrily plastered. When they all left, and all us little childrens were asleep, my parents began their inebriated, ham-handed wrapping of the gifts and addressing them to each of me and my sisters from Santa, to be put under the tree.

The next morning, there they were – through the dark (it was usually around 5am when the first kid woke up; the rule was that kid had to go around and wake up the other kids, so we could all then collectively wake the hungover parents) I could see the tell-tale shape of a gift-wrapped, briefcase-sized record player, and the flat, square shape of a 33-rpm record in its jacket. I could barely contain myself.

When everyone was finally awake, my sisters and I rushed the tree as if it might escape. Naturally the first things I went for were the record player and record, and as soon as I got them in my hands I could not believe my eyes when I noticed they were

addressed to my sister.

My parents, while wrapping presents, clearly got our lists mixed up, and gave the record player and the record to my sister, Fran. In shock, I had to bite my tongue and watch as my sister ripped open the wrapping paper and claimed the thing I wanted more than my own beating heart for herself, and screamed, “LOOK, I GOT A RECORD PLAYER!” It was one of the first times in my life my brain recorded real pain that wasn’t physical. Not at first, anyway; eventually my stomach began to hurt and my ears started ringing and my vision got black around the corners. Our parents were fairly strict, and so tantrums were just out of the question, so even that young and that disappointed, somehow I knew not to call anyone out on it. It would just be poor form and ruin everyone’s good time. But oh, that one hurt.

It had a red lid and it was called the Grasshopper. And every time my sister played “Who Put The Bomp (In the Bomp Ba Bomp Ba Bomp)” it was like a little dagger in my eight year-old heart.

Best – When I was 12 years old, my mom’s rule was that I wasn’t going to be able to get my ears pierced until I was 16. (16 was a magic age for her because that was also the age that she was going to let me start dating) So…that Christmas that I was 12, one of my presents was a pair of earrings and the promise that we’d go get my ears pierced, the next week. Unfortunately, she never noticed how freakishly small my ear lobs are/were so the earrings quickly ripped my earlobes and I haven’t been able to wear pierced earrings ever since. You might say that should be a “worst” scenario, but the truth is that was the first time I realized that the things that weren’t supposed to be possible until I was sixteen were negotiable and THAT’S how I got to start going out on dates when I was 15.
Worst – My sister wrapped up one of my own books and gave it to me for Christmas because she was too cheap to give me something that cost any money and too selfish to give me something of hers. My sister and I are not estranged, but giving me my own crap was not something that has helped keep us close.

Best present would have to be the homemade desk that I’m writing this comment on (well actually I’m writing on my computer, not the desk because then you wouldn’t be able to read the comment at all which would be a giant waste of time and the desk would be much less pretty then) – my husband made it for me last year in secret and I honestly had no idea he was even making me anything, just that he was “building something in the basement out of a bunch of pieces of boring looking wood” – end result was amazing.

Worst present was in high school – my birthday is Christmas Eve which means that I get gipped a lot by family members and loved ones and normally I don’t mind unless they go out of their way to be lame about it. One year an uncle who clearly didn’t know me well gave me the Lord of the Rings trilogy (the books) and joked, “one for your birthday, one for Christmas and one just because!” and you know now as an adult I’d maybe read them because I’ve seen the movies and those were cool but as a teen who was more into the Backstreet Boys and clothes and stuff, I was not impressed. At all.

One year my (now ex) sister-in-law felt the need to give me Emily Post’s Book of Etiquette. Niiiiiiiice. I’d never actually been stabbed by a Christmas present before.

After the divorce, a dear friend was having a book-burning to celebrate 5 years being (ovarian) cancer free…ridding herself of the thoughtless choice in books, reading and letters some people felt the need to give her as she was going through treatment. (For example: Gilda Radner – lovely woman, sad ending.) She invited me along, and I brought Emily Post with me. It’s a damn big book with lots of fire power. Great way to banish the ghosts of mean people past.

Best present ever: It just might be the Keurig that Amazon accidentally revealed that someone purchased me. (But only on my phone. Not on the computer.) I’m due in April with child #2 and the nearly instant ability to have coffee will come in handy.

Worst present ever: The clearly regifted pasta-maker (plastic tube to put your spaghetti in with some hot water) from my own grandmother. The box was beat-up, I think a piece was missing, and I heard that they don’t work that well anyways. And I don’t see how they are that much better than a pan.

I know it’s cliche to say your kid is the best present ever, but mine is. I miscarried 2 single pregnancies and 1 set of twins. I’m blessed to have my son, now 15 and the most hilarious, wonderful person I’ve ever known.
The worst present came from my husband. He usually doesn’t even bother which is bad enough. But a few years ago he topped himself by buying me a candy bar. I single candy bar. I don’t really eat sweets and rarely eat candy bars. I would rather he had forgotten or ignored it as usual.

Best present ever would have to be my hand made bed from my step-dad. He asked for a wood working book with all these plans inside to build different types of furniture for Christmas on year and my mom and I got it for him. I was thumbing through it on Christmas day and came to this mission style bed and asked him to make it for me; except it needed to be taller. He said yes and by the following Christmas it was in my room. *Side note to this story I tease him and say he loves the bed more than me because in his cubicle at work there are pictures of the bed but none of me. (in his defense he brought them in to show off his work to the coworkers, not to just stare at the bed)

Worst present was a box of dried fruit for some random company I never heard of given to me by my boss…

I’ve had a LOT of good presents over the years. It would be impossible for me to list them. Conversely, I’ve also had some real doozies. My grandma gave me the most god awful 3 kitty sweatshirt once (I was 27? 28?) and some seriously f’d up lamps once. But the topper was when my grandpa gave me “The History of Sex” – hardbound (and damn, that thing was giant) when I was 16ish. So wrong. On so many levels. The shame still haunts me.

Best Present: iPod circa 2004. I had started traveling a lot for work, and that thing was a god send. And best part is, it still works. 🙂

Worst Present: Teddybear made out of mink. From my aunt. And I’m an animal rights activist who owned a chinchilla at that point in time. I was so glad that was the last present, so I could hightail it out of there.

Worst: My mom wrapped up a holiday candle holder for me that had wax dripped on it. I told we bought this together at the after Christmas sales last year. I used it for a month, hence the wax. We joke about it now so at least it wasn’t as terrible as some of the stories here.

Best: My brother rarely gets me anything for Christmas, despite my doing so for him nearly every year. On the one year I actually decided not to buy that brother anything, mum orchestrated the whole family getting me a Cuttlebug for scrapbooking. I was mortified and delighted, but thankfully my brother didn’t mind. I still have my cuttlebug and I use it plenty!

Worst: My father and stepmother got me a little holder for tights — lingerie style. My father confessed he thought it was ACTUAL lingerie. They also got me see-through pajamas another year. Yeah.

Best present ever – tie between the Make your own makeup kit I got for Christmas when I was ten (my mom swore she would not buy it for me) and the Kindle I got from my wonderful husband a few years ago.

Worst present(s) ever – all the gifts my nasty ex-husband got me one year for Christmas. He was nice enough to have his girlfriend help him with shopping. Yes, that’s right…his girlfriend helped him shop for his wife and the wife knew. Hence he is the ex-husband.

Best present: A bike with training wheels & metallic fringe on the handlebars. And it was BRAND-NEW!!! I’m from a family of 6 kids, so brand-new was a HUGE deal.

Worst present: My family of 6 has a 5-year separation between the first 3 kids & last 3 kids. My 2 sisters – 2 1/2 years older & 3 years younger, respectively – & I made up the younger 3, & my mom had a nasty habit of dressing us like twins or triplets (I’m in the middle, so guess who NEVER got clothes that didn’t match one or both sisters). 30 years ago (I was 18yo), velour sweatsuits were “in”, so Mom got us each one. In pastels. Mine was yellow. I’m almost 6 feet tall with fair skin & blond hair &, at the time, I was about 124 pounds. I looked like a giant banana.

Best: When I was nine, my parents gave me all the supplies for a kitten with a note saying my new kitten was waiting for me to choose at the local shelter. I loved that cat more than anything and miss him very much.

Worst: Hard to say (or remember, one of the two)… I got a barbie once during my teen goth years. But it was picked out by a two year old cousin who got me in a name draw. He insisted. So I gave him a big hug and a thank you, but gave it to charity.

Worst present, ever: A toss-up between a cheap, not-really-gold-plated necklace with a heart pendant. It was the only present my dad & stepmother gave me that year and I then had to watch my younger sister open a huge pile of presents. It really hammered home just how much my stepmother didn’t like me. I was one devastated 16 year old. I was going to mention the hooker boots that my ex-husband gave me one year, but after typing the above, I’m going to have to say that the necklace was definitely the worst present I ever received.

Best present: A toss-up between a new washing machine (not just a gift of an appliance, but also, a gift of free time, since I no longer had to schlep the clothes to the laundromat and spend hours washing/drying/folding a mountain of clothes once a week) and my set of pretty plates that I use for special occasions. (I do love a practical gift!)

Best present ever: When I was 16, my parents and my grandfather bought me a car. I opened a box that said, “this weekend we’re going to pick out a car! Yay you!” And then I got to go over their allotted budget when I fell in love with a 1994 Ford Explorer…that lived well behind her means for many many years.

Worst present ever: When I was in college, my mom bought a bunch of large sized juniors tees (which in grown women sizes is a small) with Elmo and Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny or some cartoon characters. So, 1. I was WAY too old for these shirts in my 20 year old opinion, 2. They didn’t fit me anyways, and 3. They were also on clearance for like a dollar each, so I had to give them to my little sister who was tiny and in high school and would wear them.

Best:
I come from a family of Christmas fanatics (we’re basically the Crachits minus a Scroogey benefactor), and have told my wife several times over the years that I would be perfectly happy to have a Christmas with no presents, just a season of caroling and baking and snuggling in front of the tree. Last year was particularly hard for us. I was unemployed, recovering from surgery, and we were so strapped for cash that we were living with friends. My amazing wife (with the help of one of those friends and his basement recording studio) made me a CD of her singing some of my favourite carols. I cried from happiness.

Worst:
The year before, when we spent Christmas with my family, someone brought and shared a case of norovirus that put me in the ER and did permanent damage to my diaphragm muscle (the one that lets you inhale).

Best Present ever: a camera. My first. Started me on a path to actually getting paid to take photos from time to time.

Worst present ever: A boyfriend that I was not serious about jumping out of a box wearing boxers and a bow tie. He was packed into this box by HIS MOTHER. She stuck around to get my reaction. I still wake up in a cold sweat over it.

Best gift ever: not a Christmas present but a birthday present when I was 16. Teenage me had quite the crush on MacGyver, & religiously taped every episode every week. I had asked for a Jeep that birthday, & was mildly disappointed at the shoebox sized box wrapped in brown paper they handed me. Until I opened it. Using the beeper out of an old smoke alarm, a kitchen timer, a chunk of plumbers putty, & 3 sticks painted red & zip tied together, my wonderful dad built me a “bomb” to defuse for my birthday, inside which there was the Swiss Army knife that had nearly every attachment possible & a black hot wheels jeep. Half a lifetime later, the knife is in my pocket daily & the jeep lives on my desk. They also sang happy birthday to the MacGyver theme song 🙂

Worst gift ever: my former mother in law got me a $10 dollar gift card to Dollar Tree. It had been previously used and only had $3.27 left on it. I would have laughed it off had it not been the same year my now ex husband bought me a bargain bin book on weight loss… I was 9 months pregnant with our 2nd child. So glad I don’t have to suffer gifts from that entire family anymore!

Worst Present: Our stockings were always filled with candy and being the oldest of three children, my stocking hung directly in the middle of the fireplace (Dad, Mom, Me, Sister, Brother). The year my sibs got up early and turned up the gas fireplace and melted everything in MY stocking was great. Now that I think about it, the dead mouse my mother put in my stocking one year because I always guess my gifts before opening might have been worse.

The best present I ever received was probably the custom full riding chaps my parents got me when I was 17; 9 years later and I wear them all the time still.

The worst Christmas present I ever received was a toss up between the weird pink furry bucket hat that was too small that my sister’s at-the-time bf bought me and the present my ex got me: the fourth book in a series that I didn’t like and didn’t own the other 3 books in (especially awkward since he had texted me asking me if I liked this series and I said no.)

The worst presents I have received were both actually courtesy of my mother however and were both for my birthday… for my 13th birthday I received a 12 pack of Kraft Dinner and nothing else, and for my 14th birthday I received Proactiv facial cleansers which she took after a week and a half to use herself since “they weren’t making any difference on my face”. Thanks mom.

Worst present ever: not for Xmas, but about 6 months after I started seeing my now-husband, he went on an epic month long round the world tour with his best friend (Sydney, Hong Kong, NYC, Vegas). He brought me back an action figure of Steve Irwin crocodile hunter, a tea towel with a picture of a chicken that said “Nice Breasts”, and a bell.

Best present ever: Set of Folio society hardcover English lit classics that my dad got me before I set off for college, ohhh 15 years ago. I have them all still, and I expect to have them forever 🙂

Best present ever: Handmade china doll by a group of retarded adults my mom oversaw when she worked as the director of their mental clinic. It broke years ago, but it was beautiful. The thought meant more to me than anything, though…even as a kid.

Worst present ever: I know she meant well, but a HUGE print of Jesus in a cheap plasticky-brass frame from the ex’s grandmother. The only good thing about it was that it was thin enough to hide behind the couch between family visits.

Best gift ever was when I was living in Virginia . I really wanted a Dukes of Hazzard barn busters set. When I got to the box I was sure held it, I was surprised it was a padded toilet seat. I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t the race set. I ended up using that toilet seat every day, multiple times you understand. It was always comfy, and never cold. I loved that damn thing.
Worst gift ever was from my former mother in law. She gave me 2 carat cubic zirconia used earrings. I’m not opposed to cubic zirconias, but let’s be honest, I’m not putting big ones in my ears. That she dug out of her own drawer. My ex husband told me that she wrapped up a bottle of crown that he left at her house and gave it to him last year. She’s getting more creative in her old age.

Worst gift : as a child, a huge porcelain doll with blue eyes that closed and opened when you moved it and soft green velvet clothes. It must have cost a fortune and I really didn’t mean to be ungrateful but it started a LIFELONG PHOBIA OF DOLLS AND PUPPETS.
They filmed me receiving it : I just sat there, the monstrous thing on my lap, rigid with fear, eyes wide open and staring. They probably just thought I loved it so much I didn’t know what to say!
The damn thing spent the next seven years rolled up in blankets and stuffed at the back of a locked closet.

best: a new front tooth. in elementary school i knocked out my front tooth and had a hideous cement monstrosity put in its place. but my parents never capped it for me, i just had this not shaped properly thing where one of my front teeth should be. when i was 22 and without dental insurance, the guy i was dating knew how much i hated the fake front tooth and paid for me to get it capped. i am 42 and still consider that a better christmas gift than even the expensive and stunning diamond earrings i wear every day for about 10 years.

worst: i don’t think i have one. i love when anyone thinks that i should have a present. granted i don’t keep everything, but i honestly can’t remember a “bad” gift.

Best present: in 1985 my mom and dad took me and my two best friends to a Rick Springfield concert for my 13th birthday. Technically, my dad drove us and dropped us off and my mom went with us. Dad didn’t want to be anywhere near that many screaming girls, but the gift was still as much from him as from mom.

Best present I initially thought was lame: a portable battery charger to carry around in my car trunk…the kind of gift a dad gives because he loves and worries about his daughter. I’ve used it multiple times since getting it and called to thank him afterwards each time.

Worst: back in the days when the cousins and I drew names, there was always the one I hoped drew me and the one I hoped didn’t. Anyway, I got one of those you-have-to-plug-it-into-the-wall alarm clocks that had FM radio when I had asked for a portable boom box.

Worst present: When I was 10, relatives got me some shirts to a football team I didn’t care about.

Best present: Can I get back to you? This year hubby said he has some surprise gifts and I want to see what they are. I know what one might be and if it’s what I think (Rogue tshirt) those might be some of the best presents I’ve gotten.

So, my husband and I were just discussing this. He said “my best present would probably be the Nerf Sniper Rifle you got for me the year before we got married,” then he paused and said, “that would probably be your worst present, since I shot you in the head with it. Twice.” All of which is true….except the part about where that would be my worst present because, after the second shot to the forehead, I laughed so hard I peed my pants. I think if you laugh so hard you pee your pants, the gift cannot possibly be a worst and may approach a best. My husband’s response when I told him this? “You peed your pants???!!?!?!???!” Yeah……and I couldn’t tell him at the time because we weren’t married, yet. Ah, love.

I have lots of ‘best’ presents – my family are all nuts in a good way – but the one that stands out was from my husband a couple of years ago: the Doctor Who Complete David Tennant Years DVD set. I’m a Rose Tyler fan, so that combined with the 9th Doctor set I already had was everything I could ever want.

Worst present; probably a Christmas Hamper from my parents – many of the products were past expiry date, likely to cause an allergy, or just not pleasant or tasty.
Arguably the best present is no longer communicating with my family; the worst present was in keeping with the passive aggressive toxic relationship I had with them, so getting nothing is actually better than getting anything from them.

Worse present ever: I paid for the sitting fee for our family to have photos taken-we had one taken of my parents by themselves. For Christmas I got a copy of the picture I had paid for in a cheap frame. But that is not the best/worse part. My mom announced as we opened the thing that this was the picture to be placed on top of her and/or Dad’s coffin when they died. To this day in my family, if you take a good picture–you refer to it as your Coffin Picture!

Can the same gift be both? Because I’m a guy, and in college I received a mini deep fryer that obviously come from a garage sale and a huge stuffed dog from the same person. I know, right? But here’s the thing: I actually liked the stuffed dog and kept it long after parting with other such stuff, and I used the heck out of the fryer for several years. So there’s that.

Best present, round trip airline ticket (business class) to Paris. Worst present(s) a copy of a book I already have. I added the extra “s” because it seems to happen every two years. Oh crap, I’m due for another duplicate book.

Best present ever: On Christmas Eve, we found out that after a lengthy (nearly 4 years) court battle, our adoption was approved for our son who had been placed in foster care in our home when he was only 3 weeks old.
Worst present ever: My husband bought me a garbage can for our kitchen. Seriously. A.Garbage.Can.

I used to have a burp gun when I was a kid, but I didn’t know that was what it was called! When you said “burp gun”, I was envisioning some sort of gun powered by putting your mouth to it and burping, or something like that? Possibly comes with a free fart gun?

Worst: I was a good kid. I sometimes acted up, as all kids do, but comparatively speaking, I was a very well-behaved innately good kid. Around the holidays if I acted up, it was usually after consuming lots of holiday goodies. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I found out I was allergic to corn. (Guess what the main ingredient in most of those holiday treats was? Corn syrup! Guess what one of the symptoms of a corn allergy is? Mood fluctuations!) One year, when I was a moody pre-teen, my dad thought it would be hilarious to fill my stocking with coal briquets. I spent the whole morning in tears.

Best: Mini-Marshmallow Shooter. The year before for Christmas we were at the house of family friends and went to see their newly redecorated master bedroom suite. Somehow we ended up throwing mashmallows at the fan above the bed and had the silliest, best time ever. When they found the mashmallow guns online they couldn’t resist getting one for me for Christmas. My niece and nephew and the boys who live upstairs from me LOVE it to this day. I’ve actually had a passel of 6 kids under the age of ten begging me to get out the mashmallow gun to shoot them.

Worst Present 1 – My boyfriend after high school got me a 4 year membership to a gym. Why? He thought I would like it since I got up early every day to go to the gym. He broke up with me about 6 months later and honestly I couldn’t tell you if he paid for all four years, I stopped going to that gym.

Worst Present 2 – A few years ago my mother in law didn’t get me a present at all. NOTHING, not even stocking stuffers. But everyone else got rather nice gift cards from her. So she slapped my name on my husband’s gift and passed it off as it was for both of us. Yeah, well hubby spent the whole $150 Menards gift card on himself for tools for his work so I still got NOTHING.

Worst – the first year we were married, and we found out 3 days before Christmas that the baby I was pregnant with was dead inside me. Went home to wait for the miscarriage to start, only it didn’t. 4 days AFTER Christmas we went back to the hospital to have the D&C done. Yup – I spent the first Christmas of my marriage pregnant with a dead baby. The worst was the baby stuff my DH had bought & wrapped for “Baby” under our tree. we opened the package and cried together for most of the rest of the day.

Best – 2 years later when my oldest survivor (I have 3 kids who survived my womb, 4 angels who did not.) was born premature in Germany a few weeks before Christmas – and we still managed to get on the last MAC flight out and get home to Italy (we were a Navy family). We came home to two HUGE boxes waiting for us – In one box, my mom had done a “reverse” baby shower for us stateside – She had all my friends bring gifts unwrapped, they did the whole shower thing, wrote out cards with advice & encouragement, then wrapped the gifts. She taped the whole thing, then mailed us the video and all the gifts! The second box was Christmas gifts from my family.

Other Best: The year my 3rd survivor was born abt a week after Christmas – after 10 weeks of bedrest – and was able to breathe on his own from the get-go.

Third Best: The year BEFORE we got married, when hubby gave me a model corvette – forest green convertible (my fav!) – with a gold necklace hanging from the rearview mirror.

Best gift: a digital personal organizer when I was like 9 years old. I recently found it and looked at the information i had stored in it. I entered a note thay said “tv shows are being rated now” and “state quarters are coming out”. Apparently I wanted to keep track of trivial news stories, not contacts or birthdays.
Worst gift: my dad and stepmom once gave me a paper “beware of dog” sign. I did not have a dog, nor did I ever intend to have a dog. I hate dogs. I don’t know what they were thinking.

Worst Christmas present ever: The year I asked for money to take yoga classes (the only thing I wanted) and I got a shirt I would never wear, a glass candle holder that my mother made clear to me she got free for buying something for herself, and a check for less than the cost of yoga classes, but the cost of the shirt would have put it at enough. Same Christmas my sister got 3 designer suits, a microwave and my mother’s diamond studs that she had promised to me years before, but couldn’t give me because she had nothing comparable to give my sister.

Worst present ever: My 1st Anniversary with my ex. He got me nothing, but told everyone he got me a gift certificate for a massage. He passed within one mile of the salon every day going to/coming from work and never stopped to buy it. I eventually broke down and just bought myself a massage.

Best present ever: Waking up 2 Christmases ago in my condo that I had just bought and moved into 2 weeks before and lighting a fire in my fireplace. It is my first home that I’ve owned and was a MAJOR accomplishment (one my mother told me to my face I would never get).

Worst (possibly, the decision is tough) A Snuggy. That blanket thing with sleeves. We saw a commercial for them and I said “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen!” That was enough for DH. He remembered me mentioning the item but not the context. Typical. He hears about one word out of ten.

worst: fucking pantyhose – from EVERYONE. I was 13 – package after package of pantyhose, no matter how creatively wrapped, will result in the need for therapy. I’m guessing they thought somehow that was going to convince me that dresses were cool. Fuck yeah! NOT!

best: the consolation that the same Christmas everyone gave my older brother underwear. not sure what the message was behind that (ahem!). Sick family – God bless them… Learned that if you give your kid one bitchn Christmas – every Christmas after that will be considered freaking awesome.

Worst present ever: One Xmas I didn’t get any presents from my immediate family because I guess they forgot or thought someone else would handle it. So I got towels from my uncle–very nice bath sheets. So I sat there with my towels while everyone else continued opening presents. (Reading other comments, looks like Jennifer A and I have to meet someday and have drinks. I’ll bring the bourbon.)

Best present ever: Same Xmas, I left a present from my friend at home, so after returning home I opened the gift to find an Easy Bake Oven. Yes, I was an adult but I had always wanted one and my friend remembered I had said that.

Considering that I used to put SO much effort into gifts, stocking stuffers, etc., before this incident and that, typical to my family, nobody apologized but instead pretended it never happened, I now put much less effort into the whole thing. Mostly I try to avoid it.

Worst: also from an estranged grandparent–I called her my crazy grandma and she was a massive cheapskate. One year she bought me one pair of jeans from goodwill and a canister of fake chocolate powder should I desire a cup of nasty hot chocolate.

Best: I’ve been blessed with many good Christmases and have too many to name.

The worst present I’ve seen (fortunately not received): my husband’s sister’s parents-in-law had a tradition of giving — and regicing year after year — joke presents. Items like pantyhose for men with an extra pouch for the extra equipment and a “gum massager”, a plastic breast with an electric cord attached. Fortunately before we were married, he had told his parents privately how tasteless they were and how appalled he was. They must have told the in-laws because he was never included again and I was left out too. They kept up the tradition with the “jokes” being passed around year after year without us.

Worst: I originally thought it was the gas card I got from my secret Santa last year (I don’t have a car), but then I remembered when I was eight and opened up the last envelope to discover a clue. I was so thrilled. My dad was famous for making up treasure hunts and I had finally gotten my very own! I couldn’t wait to see what was at the end of it. It went on for quite a bit; upstairs and down, back to front. Finally, I found myself in my very own bedroom looking at… a giant roll of wall-to-wall carpeting. Woo. Exactly what every child hopes for.

Best: My mom took up quilting when she retired and I had been jokingly bugging her for my own quilt for a few years, not really expecting one. Little did I know that she had been working on one behind my back for a while. She gave it to me a few years ago and it takes pride of place on my bed.

Worst: a broken candle holder with a $20 bill in it to buy a new one. My mother broke it and decided to give it to me anyway along with money to go and buy a new one. That same year I got a blender (that I asked for) in an odd color because my mother didn’t feel like looking for the color that I wanted since she started shopping for me 5 days before Christmas. Thanks mom!

Best: my iPod that I got 9 years ago when iPods were fairly new. I still use it daily!

Worst present: a training bra, given to me from a teen cousin (female) cousin that should have known how embarrassing that would be to open in front of the entire extended family.

Best Present ever: hard to say, my husband is a really good gift giver. But one time he roofed a glass sculptor ‘ s studio and got some fancy glass and a partial payment… actually I think that was Valentines Day bit it was still awesome.

I always ended up with packs of panties, outfits, socks. In sixth grade I got a training bra for Christmas. My four year old cousin had worn one for a while. SHE needed it (A double D to my barely there, now!) I? Didn’t.

Worst? My ex mother in law gave me a bathset that made me break out in hives… because to be nice, I put on a little of the “Raspberry Violet Sweettart Abomination” lotion. Then she asked me if I could cover it up because I made her feel guilty.

Best: Wooden Barbie House with pulley elevator, which I found out years later my dad had actually made the doll house (In his better handyman stages of life…only wish our bathroom remodel had gone as well as that doll house)

Worst: Annie, on DVD is the worst gift I ever got b/c i orginally got it for my sister. I bought a cheap five dollar DVD to give my sister b/c typically she is ungrateful and usually has some kind of tantrum on Christmas (yes she is an ‘adult’ and older than me) and I tried not to put alot of effort into it so I wouldn’t be pissed off. So I buy her Annie on DVD, and she gives me $5 dollar gift card to Target. She immediately informs me, “She already owns it”. So I say fine…I’ll take it, and give her back her $5 dollar gift card.

The worst part is…last Christmas, she goes to me, (this is about 2 years after the Annie incident), that I should get her Annie on DVD b/c …wait for it….SHE DOESN’T OWN IT. And no. She wasn’t joking. SO that is the worst gift I’ve gotten b/c I ended up giving it to myself after my sister informed me she already owned when in fact she didn’t.

Best present ever ( there are two): (1) I love Kinder eggs. When we were dating my now-husband took a kinder eggs,carefully cracked the chocolate seal open, cracked open the egg, took out the toy, put in a necklace, then resealed it all. (2) We have a tradition with our kids, when they are 7 and under, where each Christmas we take them to the dollar store, have them choose gifts for us and tell the reason behind their thinking – we then transcribe the thought into cards that gowith each present. Some are hilarious! But the best was (keeping in mind I have low self esteem about my looks) was when my eldest who was then around 4, bought me a mirror with the reason “so Mommy can always see how beautiful she is”. Still makes me cry!

Worst present: one Christmas my then-husband bought me no gift then on Boxing Day sales came home with my gifts – a mop and a diet book. (actually he is still my husband, and to be fair we are both frugal, I did love the mop as was a steam mop, and the book was from The Biggest Loser a show which I love. So I am kind of cheating but you must admit had I only written the first sentence it would have been a doozy of a set-up re worst gift – and to this day is something our friends and I tease him about 🙂

My grandmother, who is random and silly to begin with, gave me the worst holiday gift ever. I’m 20 and my boyfriend (now husband) came for his first Christmas with my family. He’s sitting beside me when I open the box and there’s a pair of new pink granny panties and a spaghetti serving utensil. I looked at her puzzled but she only grinned, nodded and waggled her eyebrows at me. I still don’t get it but even thinking about the possibilities gives me nightmares. Golden Girls on BDSM.

My best gift was something I took entirely for granted at the time. My father didn’t know I’d be at Christmas this year and gave me a set of knives. Like in a block. My sister got a few designer bags and gorgeous boots and here I was at 20 something with a nifty knife block. Fast forward a decade and I still have those absolutely kickass, really badass, expensive knives and my sister doesn’t even remember her purses. Also, my gift was far more versatile. Cooking, crafting, showing off, home defense. Way cooler.

Best: I’ve been a voracious reader since I was two – have NEVER gone anywhere without a book. Everyone who knows me finds out that reading is my FAVORITE pastime pretty quickly. My friends and I are among those who don’t have a lot of spending ability but two years ago my colleague got 10 friends to each contribute some money to buy me a Kindle AND went through the trouble of getting it mailed to a friend in the UK who forwarded it here because Amazon doesn’t ship to Bosnia.
My colleague explained that he researched all sorts of different tablet and tablet-like things and finally concluded that I wouldn’t care for a thing that had full internet access but was not necessarily top-quality but would prefer a thing that was made JUST for reading. He could not possibly have been more correct.

Worst: I was helping a close friend get gifts for his wife and daughters and he tricked me into recommending a lovely LOOKING set of soap, cream and shampoo for his wife which he then gave to me. That was clever and sweet, the reason it’s worst is that when I opened it I gagged at the smell of the plant/flower it is extracted from/flavored with or whatever you call that. I packed it tight again and am saving it to give to someone who will appreciate fancy toiletries (not necessarily for a special occasion – just anyone whose nose interprets differently from the way mine does).

Best present? Probably the succession of my Aunt Judy’s quilts through the years. I get a new one every couple years at Christmas and she’s a serious quilter–wins blue ribbons at the Minnesota State Fair. But the best part of it is when we go fabric shopping together and bicker and haggle over every scrap that goes into the quilts (she is extremely opinionated about things…and I am JUST like her) so when I see the quilt I giggle remembering the fabric fights.

Worst present? Same aunt – massive flashlight. I think there was a joke about it that I was too young to understand at the time. If you’re not going to explain the joke, why the heck are you giving me the gift? So it didn’t make any sense AND made me feel like an outsider. She started quilting a few years after that and made up for it.

Best: on my 25th birthday I bought myself a horse. Best present ever. I’m an excellent gift giver. 🙂 (II’m also blessed with having received many thoughtful and wonderful gifts from loved ones over the years that I could have listed, but my horse was far far the best Christmas/birthday splurge I’ve ever made for myself).

Worst: When I was growing up, every year for my birthday my aunt and uncle would send me a card with $100 in it. At Christmas, they sent cards with $100 each for me and my 2 younger siblings. Now, my birthday is December 16th, nine days before Christmas. On my 18th birthday, I opened the card from my aunt and uncle and it basically read “Since you’re an adult now, we no longer will be including money in these cards. Happy birthday!” I had not been expecting that and my 18-year old self was very surprised and disappointed because I had already been planning to spend that money on clothes. And then nine days later was Christmas morning, and my sister and brother and I all got cards from my aunt and uncle, except my siblings received money and I got another “no more money for YOU!” card, which they of course proceeded to lord over me every single year until they, too, turned 18 and got cut off.

Worst: A few years ago, I got up to find my stocking stuffed full. I was so excited because we weren’t doing gifts. My excitement soon died when I realized my gf had taken half the candy I put in her stocking and put it in mine then filled the rest with stuff she found around the house. Like MY battery charger to MY camera. Fruit I’d bought that was in the fridge. She forgot to buy anything and thought this was funny.

Best: A stereo with remote control which was totally high tech back when I was a teen. They also bought a crap load of records to go with it. Or, the new range that was just delivered today. All from my parents.

Grandma provided one that qualifies as both best and worst: when I was in college, I noticed that she had begun an odd trend of sending me checks for amounts that didn’t make sense, like $8.00 (why not round up to 10 or down to 5?). I puzzled over each one, trying to find a connection to the particular birthday or holiday, and on my 21st birthday, I thought surely she would break with this odd “tradition” and send me something either more substantial or at least matching my number of years, but, no, it was a check for $13 and change. Yes, she’d sometimes include some random amount of change. It was disappointing to a struggling college student but utterly endearing in hindsight. Now when my aunt writes checks from Grandma’s account (she’s 98 and doesn’t write very well any more), it’s a little sad that the amounts are the “standard” I was expecting in college — $50 or $100.

One of the best I don’t actually remember. The gifts, that is. Again in college. By the time my b-day had arrived, not a single card or present had arrived in the mail. This was unusual. When I returned from classes that day, still nothing in the mail, causing a small pain in my chest. But then I walked down the hallway to my bedroom and was surprised by two small, beautifully wrapped gifts, dangling from pretty ribbon in my open doorway. My artistic roommate (who became my best friend) had left them. I don’t recall whether she had noticed the fact that I hadn’t received anything yet, or she had done it just because that’s the type of person she is. Nearly 30 years later, I can’t for the life of me remember what was in those lovely little packages, but they count among the best gifts ever.

Worst present ever: A pony doll (one of those 80s ponies, not the weird new ones) that should have smelled nice but was highly poisionous because of some general fuckup that made them withdraw the whole line. It gave me terrible nosebleed that just wouldn’t stop. My parents returned it to the store. Including the blood.

Best present: When my friends took me on a photo tour to an abandoned amusement park.

I was dating a silly boy, the relationship was waning, but neither of us could admit it. Just before Christmas my dog died at age 13. This silly boy got me a “crystal” dog. Probably from the dollar store. It was of a large, long-haired dog. My dog was a beagle mix. I think that’s when I knew we were done.

Best:

After moving us to a strange city just before Thanksgiving three years ago, my husband surprised me with a MacBook. Because he knew I was lonely and missing friends and family, so he thought we could FaceTime. It was one of the most kind and thoughtful gifts, ever.

I have several best presents: My estranged mother sent me a spinning wheel from New Zealand. I spin wool. I like doing interesting old fashioned things to enhance my zombiepocalyse survival quotient.

The gifts my husband gets me are pretty rockin’ and usually involve the kitchen. I love my Vitamix. He also got me a very expensive copper coated kitchen aid mixer. But it was refurbished, so not as expensive as you might think. The thing is: I now have two kitchen aid mixers as a result.

Here is the story. The knob for attachments broke on my original mixer and so he went to look up buying a replacement. Then he was distracted by being curious and instead of buying me the knob, he bought “Me” this fancy new mixer…for my birthday. He tried to pawn it off as Chritsmas too (I am the 1st of Dec.), but I wouldn’t allow that nonsense. I never did get that stupid plastic knob.

Anyway, for a lifetime of shitty birthdays and fucked up holidays used against me as a child, I have done pretty well in the gift department as an adult. So, yay!

Perhaps the best and the worst gift were one in the same for me.
My boyfriend once gave me an expensive sweater that he picked out. Of course, it was so totally NOT something I would wear. But it was our very first Xmas together, and I was surprised and completely charmed that he even bought me anything at all. (We’d barely known each other for a couple of months.) So, best gift, right?

But then he wanted me to WEAR it! And it was so early in our relationship that I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t like it. And it looked AWFUL on me. He thought so too, but didn’t want to tell me either….afraid he would hurt my feelings and/or spoil the gift.

So it became the present from hell!

We were actually together for about three more years before we actually talked about “The Sweater Incident.” Thankfully, by that time , we could both have a good laugh about.

So…great present/bad present/best present…full circle.

But: in a tie for worst present, my Grandmother used to give me a set of knee high nylons in a rainbow of colors EVERY year. That’s what you get when you super convincingly feign to like a weird present your Grandma gives you, and she ACTUALLY believes you! Oy.

Worst present ever: Forcing a delighted smile on my face while unwrapping a boxed and papered edition of what was then the most current issue of “Seventeen” magazine. Which was a lame enough gift on its own, but I was 21 and skewed well out of the general reader’s age by then. I’ve spent the past 7 years trying to tactfully tell my aunt to never, ever give me a present again.

Best present ever: At 15, my mother stormed home on Christmas Eve and demanded my sisters and I show ourselves IMMEDIATELY. She flung open the front door to reveal my father, with a tiny, shivering Sheltie/border collie puppy zipped up in his jacket. We immediately fell in love (with the puppy, we’d already loved our father for a long time by then). We named him Dude and within five minutes of his introduction into our home, we couldn’t remember our family without him. He became a spoiled sweet furry baby brother. Thirteen years later, we face our first Christmas without him. While we miss him terribly, he is always and forever the best gift we could ever get.

Best is a toss up: when I was about five, my brother and I recieved big cardboard cut outs. Mine was a castle, complete with drawbridge that raised and lowered, corner towers and opening windows. My brother got what looked like a log cabin.
both of them were big enough that I had to jump to see over the top. Could sit in with both legs out straight, and could host a teddy bear picnic inside. Best. Ever.

A few years later, my uncle Tom gave us a SEGA GENESIS with Sonic Adventures. PLUS! A Nintendo Entertainment System with Mario Bros.2.

Worst… hmm… a cook book on *weight loss* recipients. I was 19 and 180lbs of muscle. (I’m 5’7)

Got a new trumpet once which was my best present ever but worst present ever for everyone else in my family. Worst present ever was every secret Santa gift I ever got in school that wasn’t the Lifesaver Book. Which was all of them because I never did get a Lifesaver book. Finally, I just bought myself one and stopped signing up for Secret Santa.

I’ve really enjoyed reading all the posts. I’ve had a lot of good ones and terrible ones, and I really enjoy trying to put together really good ones for others, and making an extra effort. I always prefer just because presents to obligatory ones, though.

We moved a lot, and traveled around a lot. Whenever my mom spotted an antique store, my brother and I would groan, because now it would be another hour before we could pry her away and stick out the rest of the hot and boring car trip. We had to be extra good and really careful not to break any of the old dusty stuff all heaped around while Mom dug through it.

Then, years later, it all comes together. Mom gives me a beautiful wood box, filled with a beautiful vintage grapevine repoussé silver set. She tells me she has been collecting it piece by piece as she could find it and afford it over the years, to give to me when I was moving into my first real home. From all of those roadside antique stores. When I think of all the complaining we did, the rolling of eyes, the sighs- and Mom never said a word. She had one for both of my brothers, too- she had selected a different pattern for each of us.

So it is clearly the best present, but also the worst, as I flash back to my impatient child self giving her grief over this ongoing lovely gesture. My insides still just can’t decide what to make of it. But you can bet I cherish that silverware.

Worst present: Every year at Christmas and my birthday, come to think of it, my FIL and his wife give my husband and me gift cards to Dillard’s. We are not Dillard’s people. I live in t-shirts and jeans and he is 6’5″ so work clothes come from a big and tall store. After I get a new purse, the kids get new clothes. The amount on the card is fabulous, but it would be nice if I could buy books or something I’ll actually use with it. We finally informed them after they asked us that we aren’t Dillard’s shoppers. We got checks for our birthdays. We’ll see what happens this year. Runner up is the year my brother got a Cabbage Patch kid Christmas morning, “Because it was a boy and Santa couldn’t give it to a girl.” Seriously, that was the line my mother fed me over that one. My brother never did play with it.

Best present: I got a red tape recorder, Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Billy Joel’s album that had ‘Uptown Girl’ on it. I love music. And movies, but I was obsessed with music first. Being able to listen to *my* music when I wanted to listen to it was amazingly awesome to me and still is. Thank goodness for MP3s or our house would be overrun with CDs and books! Runner up is my Cabbage Patch kid that I still have in her original clothes and diaper. I got this present from my baby sister’s godparents because I was her bone marrow donor when/if we went that direction. (We did.) Totally saved that Christmas for my parents. 🙂

Best present ever: The Meade Telescope that arrived on December 26th of my 5th grade year. It was really all I had asked for for Christmas and it arrived the day after. I remember feeling crushed on the day of that I hadn’t received it. It was a surprise gift from my father (my mother did the shopping), and it turned out that would be the last Christmas before he passed away. That telescope was my Red Rider BB Gun moment.

Worst present ever: My boyfriend’s mother (now my MIL) bought me cheap flannel string bikini panties (this was the mid-90s) and an awful shiny polyester animal print teddy, all from Walmart…because apparently, she had walked in on us sleeping naked. She thought I should have something to sleep in.

Worst: It’s a toss up between A) a candle I got from a student that looked like a huge chunk of Swiss cheese!!! And B) a size 22 top I received from my stepmother when I was a size 8. Ummm …. Thanks?

Best: my grandma and grandpa wrote clues to send my sister and I on a scavenger hunt to find out presents- Cabbage Patch Kids! (This was in about 1984, when it was the newest and latest thing!y sister and I used to call Toys R Us every day asking the price to find out if they were on sale! We were SO excited!!!!)

Best…a from scratch German chocolate cake.
Worst…universal remote from my ex so he didn’t have to get up to change channels. His other gift was The Matrix Reloaded, so that on my Dads upcoming visit he wouldn’t be stuck watching all my girlie movies. I didn’t break up with him for two more years!

Worst present: it’s a toss up. Either the incredibly hideous seven inch long knife with a cast resin sheath and handle in the shape of an East Asian style dragon given to me by a well-meaning if TOTALLY misguided aunt, or the first cellphone my parents bought me in college. I did NOT want a cellphone. I still don’t. Instant verbal communication is not my thing. I think my actual response was, “You’re kidding me, right? I don’t want this.” Which probably makes me a bad and ungrateful daughter. (Actually, the Dragon Blade probably isn’t in the running. It’s become a bit of a holiday tradition– we break it out every Christmas and it sits on the mantle next to the nativity scene because it’s hilarious.)

Best present: a plat archaeology kit when I was eight. It was a giant tub of hardened dirt, with potsherds and beads and pebbles and stone figures distributed throughout, and it had digging tools, and graph paper so you could plot your dig and a log book to record and inventory your finds. It was awesome, and I made a MESS with it. And more recently, my mother gave me her grandmother’s watch pin, which she received from the school board after her first year of teaching in a one room school house in California in 1918. I’d just finished my first semester of teaching, and I almost cried. The watch hadn’t worked in almost fifty years, but I didn’t care. I got it all fixed up, and I wear it at least once a week, just to hear it tick away.

Best: My mom hates shopping as much as I do, she always gives nice gifts but it’s usually exactly what you asked for, so there’s no surprise to it. One year, I had asked for a new laundry basket. (I don’t even remember why I wanted that, I tend to write a TON of things on my lists so I have a better chance of being surprised.) She bought me this beautiful reed-woven, dark stained basket that was absolutely massive. I could have easily crawled inside of it and shut the lid, it was awesome. But INSIDE said basket…. She had filled in all the gaps in my collection of Piers Anthony’s Xanth series that I’d been collecting since I could read. Right up until the most recently released one. I was floored. Never before, and never since has she done something that thoughtful, and completely spontaneous.

I’m only going to call this the Worst, because it would seem like it from the outside, but it may actually be one of the best: My boyfriend is PAINFULLY practical. Our first Christmas together, he got me a knife, a first aid kit and an emergency car care kit. It took me a bit to fully digest the meaning behind that gift, and it’s certainly not the sweet, romantic gesture I had been hoping for. But then it dawned on me that all of these things were designed to keep me safe. Coming from a practical guy like that, that’s pretty much the highest compliment.

Worst so far: lotto tickets, from my new [then] husband, along with a DVD that I already had. Oh, and everything was ‘disguised’ so that opening it all would be more exciting. The lotto tickets had used votive candles taped to them. The best part? I didn’t win anything.

Best so far: Not for any special occasion that I remember, but a stretch rhinestone bracelet of my great-grandmother’s from the ’40s which is absolutely gorgeous.

Same Christmas, I think. Best: I got my first LP-Bobby Sherman’s “With Love, Bobby” and felt like I was the coolest kid in the world (how tragic). My worst was cracking 4 of my new permanent teeth out later that morning playing crack the whip with my brother.

Worst present appreciation: When I was 20, I spent weeks on a painting for my father’s living room. He was drunk (as usual) when I gave it to him and yelled at me for 10 minutes about how horrible it was and how I was wasting my time in art.

Best present received: My sister went out and spent every dime she had on canvas, paint and brushes. I was the only person she bought a present for that Christmas. This encouraged me into two careers involving my creativity and art. I’ve had a great life of expression and I truly owe it to her and that holiday.

Best: My husband is a notoriously bad gifter if he remembers to buy a gift. He’s bought me gold earings (I’m allergic to gold), or things I had just said how much I hated. So one year was really special. Right after we were married we bought a new suite of bedroom furniture but for some reason I don’t remember now we didn’t get the mirror for the dresser. I always wanted that mirror, but I never remember saying I wanted it. A few years go by and I figure they have stopped making that style of furniture and I’m out of luck. Then after so many Christmases of bad or no gifts I have a huge box to unwrap! It’s the mirror! He tracked down the manufacturer and bought it to complete the set. It’s the best gift, because in 17 years with this man it’s the only good gift I remember!
Worst: When I was in 8th grade all of the cheerleaders were supposed to play secret Santa We drew names and we were to buy a gift and wrap it, then we would leave it in the correct girls locker so she wouldn’t know who her Santa was. When I got mine and unwrapped it it was a mens handkerchief and it was a nasty mustard yellow color. All the other girls had make up, fingernail polish, that sort of thing. Then later that day I was called to the principals office and one of the other cheerleaders was there. She had shoplifted the ugly hanky! I had to give it back so she could return it to the store she stole it from. So a stolen ugly hanky is my worst gift.

The best Christmas present I ever received was an Erector set when I was about 7 years old. My dad picked it out and I was totally enthralled. It had all these metal strips with holes in them and nuts and bolts and gears and pullies and little screwdrivers and wrenches and you could build all sorts of cool things with it. My mother was appalled because it was not a girl toy, but I loved it.

The worst present was from my sister about 30 years ago. I was living in Brownsville, TX and she sent me a pair of black fish net stockings with rhinestones up the back of the leg. In the wrong size. I was too embarrassed to even give them to the Goodwill.

I don’t think I have a story to tell here, but I will say that you all made me feel like some of my relatives are a little less screwed up than the general population of people (I’ve gotten an opened package of breath mints, popcorn popped in a trash bag and, at the age of 25, a baby doll with a trunk of clothes…), that my parents are heroes (not a single present I hated, but some gems that have just made my heart sing – Best: I got a watercolor of a skunk from my Mom when I graduated that just made my heart sing – Skunks are my favorite animal), and that I have truly found my people! Thank you all – you made my night!

My best Christmas present is one I’m getting this year but I’ll have to wait until June 2014 to enjoy. I’ll be going on a trip to Mexico with my daughter who is graduating from high school.

My worst present was from my sister-in-law, the year my mother died from breast cancer. My SIL gave me a book in which the lead female character murders her terminally ill mother. Yes, 5 months after my mom died. I have a December birthday, so I’m not sure if the book was for my bday or Xmas. My SIL has always sucked at gifts, but this was her worst, by far. I’ve begged my husband to stop exchanging gifts with them, but he won’t bring up the subject.

We need a recap in January to see if anyone has a new best/worst gift.

Best present ever: two finches in an awesome wooden cage that my brother gave me. Worst present ever: the same gift 20 minutes later when I took them to my car an both of them flew out of the cage through the overly generous sized bars.

Best present- trip to Venice Italy with out my husband! worst -a shirt that I had worn for four years and had given to a charity shop, A friend who shops at the charity shop thought it looked like something I might wear.

Just remembered the other worst/best present in one, I asked for Peter, the boy doll because I wanted to see and play with his weener. I loved dolls but did not have one with a weener, he came, he was so cute, I removed his pants right away, no weener. Just another flat slick area. I hated Peter.

Best Present Ever is hard for me because I’ve gotten and given lots of really good, dead-on gifts. Worst Present Ever, however, is easy. Mine also came from my Grandpa, not estranged though. Just strange. One Christmas when I was somewhere in my early 20’s (a hard age for a widowed grandfather to shop for his granddaughter), I went home for Christmas so he felt obliged to buy me something….anything, apparently. What he thought was a tiny disposable razor (which would be weird enough all by itself–I guess he thought it would be useful—I don’t know, I’m just the victim here) was actually a bikini line razor. You’d think the zoomed image of a nicely groomed, bikini-covered cooter would tip him off, but maybe when you’re 80 your mind doesn’t go there. I gotta admit, it did come in handy now and then.

Best present ever: My Jeep. I know it’s not sentimental, but I use it every day and it’s delivery was kind of epic, but would take way too long to explain here.
Worst?: When I still believed in Santa, my brother gave me coal and signed Santa’s name. I cried. Hard.

Worst present ever: I received a fake toy fishing pole for toddlers from my dad and his wife. I was a teenager. They also proceeded to humiliate me as my brother opened his new Nintendo Entertainment System, that I was told I was not allowed to touch without his permission.

Best: when my love and I were married, my mom gave us a hand made quilt made by a close family friend and made out of patches from all my dad’s work shirts (he was a farmer and we were used to seeing him in these shirts). He had died a couple of years prior and this was her present to us from both of them.

Worst: the first x-mas w/my love’s family, his brother gave me a William Hung doll/CD (1st yr of American Idol–“She Bangs, she bangs!”) as a joke. Twelve yrs later, that turd is going to get it BACK for x-mas!

Worst: When my mother ordered jewelry for herself, decided she didn’t like it/couldn’t afford to keep it, so used it as my birthday present. TWICE. No, I will not be politely happy for something clearly not to my taste when you TOLD ME A MONTH AGO that you meant to send it back, but just forgot.

Best: Ironically, also jewelry, this time from a near stranger. I spent two weeks my junior year of high school volunteering in Romanian orphanages. My 17th birthday was our first full day there, and I mostly just let it pass unannounced, because HOLY SHIT I’M DOING SOMETHING AMAZING 6000 MILES FROM HOME, you know? Well, my interpreter found out that evening and was completely horrified that I hadn’t told her. The next morning, she showed up with a beautiful beaded necklace in my favorite color. It meant so much to me that someone I’d just met would go out of their way to make me feel special.

Best present: It’s actually hard to choose, because I’ve had a lot of wonderful presents over the years. Awesome presents. Tim Tams from Australia, comic books, a weird plushie lion with a slinky inside, (first present my daughter ever picked out for me,) roses, a new computer, an amazon gift card sent out of the blue when I said I couldn’t afford to buy any books, the fact that my middle child chose to wait until the 27th to be born, so that I wasn’t in the hospital on christmas? Heh…

Worst present: Well, there was the time I asked for a computer in sixth grade, and ended up with a guitar bigger than I was… or perhaps the year I got school supplies… or maybe this year, for my birthday, when all I’d asked the husband for was to get some subway and have a picnic with him and our daughter on the beach, and then got yelled at because I took too long getting ready, and he wasn’t able to get a picture of the sun setting over the water for his girlfriend, and then the very next day, told me he’s planning on leaving me for her… yeah, that was fun.

Worst and best were in the same box. My Mom gave me the most ugly fuzzy winter coat that I have ever seen. It was the last gift to open and Mom always saved the best gift for last. I was so disappointed. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so I said I loved it and took it out to try it on. Under the coat was Abby Road. My very first album.

I think our worst present ever was so hilariously bizarre that it’s actually one of the best presents ever, too. But one year my husband’s grandparents gave us a can of used almonds. More precisely, they’d been eating cans of mixed nuts all year but neither of them liked almonds, so they collected all the almonds in a spare can and gave them to us for Christmas. And told us all this too. We USED the almonds, so it technically wasn’t THAT bad a gift….

worst would probably be the year my younger brother and i woke up to find our stockings filled with coal. i must have been 12 or 13, my brother 8 or 9. actual coal, not candy coal. real, dirty, coal. haha, we thought our stepfather was being funny. until we started unwrapping boxes…. which were also filled with coal.

finally he produced our ‘real’ stockings and gifts. humph. douchecanoe (he’s dead and i’m not terribly upset by it).

i’ve received a lot of stupid gifts, and a lot of thoughtful ones. but probably the best was on my 25th birthday when we picked up my first rescue cat, piglet. we found her at the town shelter four days before my birthday, but she needed to have her shots and what not. so on my birthday (it was a monday that year) my husband and best friend went to the shelter after work. her story is a long one, but i tell piglet about how she came to be with us all the time. another winning present was the year my husband (then boyfriend) found a second job to make enough money to buy me a pair of diamond studs. it was my first time at his family’s for christmas. i can’t wear them any more, but i still have them.

Best present ever? My daughter who will be 1 on the 21st of Christmas this year. And for the doctor at the hospital who let us go home on Christmas Eve so we could spend it with our other kids and her. (She had jaundice and needed phototherapy)

Worst: For my birthday this year, I posted on Facebook about these Doctor Who coins that I desperately wanted. My father in law (Who has never watched it) liked the link so I figured he was going to order them for me. I waited and waited and waited and all I got on my birthday was a text saying happy birthday. Come to my brother in laws wife’s birthday next month, she got gifts. I got nothing. That was a big part in moving back home two hours away. It still kind of hurts that I didn’t get anything and they didn’t throw a party for me like they did for her.

Not the best gift for me but in a strange turn the perfect gift for the whole family.

The summer before I was married my future Grandparent In-Law’s went to Mexico and brought me back a cheap wicker basket boxie thing with a sombrero on the top and yarn that said Mexico on it.
It. Was. Hideous. (in fact I’m not sure hideous is the right word. God, what I wouldn’t give for a photo of it)

Fast forward a few months and we were packing up my stuff to move cross country post wedding. My grandmother found this lovely item and after being told I didn’t want to take it with me she secretly put it in a nightstand drawer. I found this item while unpacking.

Christmas time I wrapped it up all pretty and shipped it back to my Grandmother.

On Christmas Eve another family member had their parent drop dead of a massive coronary while they were there. Everyone in our large family knew and loved this departed person so Christmas dinner was a somber affair. As luck would have it my ‘special’ gift to Grandma was the gift present unwrapped that day. And my Grandmother laughed until she cried and everyone else started to laugh and laughter came back.

Worst present: One year my parents gave me a used Jerry Clower CD… not just lightly used (like new), nooo…. it was beat up used, like left bouncing around in car for a while… Still had the Hastings “USED” tape across the front…yeah, I was proud of that one… (I was about 36 at the time)
Best present: hubby went to the store and bought a large gift bag and then filled it with all the things that I loved… a Stephen king book, a couple of Hershey bars with a jar of peanut butter, a box of Cinnamon Life cereal, a National Enquirer…. it was very touching…

Best present(s) ever: both came from my youngest sister (7 years younger than me). I have always been the sister that crawls around under the tree shaking everyone’s presents. The best part of Christmas for me is the potential in the present, all the day dreaming and wondering you get to do. I used to say, all the time, that my favorite part of Christmas was the two weeks before as people started to put their presents under the tree (shoot, I don’t even care if the present is for me, I am happy to fantasize about presents to other people, too). One Christmas my sister wrapped 7 of the most beautiful presents for me. She numbered them (open first, open second, etc….). On Christmas morning I started to open them and each of the boxes contained a rock, or old magazine, and on the bottom of the box was an inspirational saying scrawled in Sharpie. I get to the 7th box, which I assume must be the real present since she has saved it for last and at the bottom of this box in Sharpie it says : “I hope you enjoyed dreaming about your gifts (and really meant that was the best part of the present). I love you.” I sat there stunned for a second and then realized: Best. Gift. Ever. I had truly had a spectacular 2 weeks crawling around under the tree with my boxes.

Second best gift: also from this sister. When I came home from college to live with my parents for a year, I was completely convinced that both my sisters were wearing my underwear because, seriously, where the hell was all of it? I spent a lot of time asking them if they had my underwear on. For Christmas she bought me 10 pairs of underwear with my name monogrammed on the ass of each one. Her comment: I hope this solves our problem.

Best Present: When family got our first home computer, even though at the time I was pissed, because it was so expensive that was the only gift we got that year–thinking back now that computer changed my life and probably my IQ.

Worst Present- When I was 12 I was extra mouthy and naughty so my mom felt like I needed a little bit of a reality check. I got a 75 page picture book about world hunger and a Egyptian hieroglyphics stamp set. Apparently my mother felt like I needed to realize that there were kids in Africa starving, and for weeks afterward she required that I only communicate through the stamp set, which no one understood–since they were in *hieroglyphics*.
Yeah, totally traumatized me.

Best present ever: A TV and a Commodore 64 computer for my bedroom in 4th grade. Best Christmas EVER!

Worst present ever: A card from my Dad that said “I had some money burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided to send it to you.” When you opened the card, there was just a burned hole through the card. Nothing else in it. It was my first year away from home. I never got anything else that year either. (I guess it’s funny, but it was tragic for the first holiday away from home.)

Worst present ever was not for Christmas but for Valentine’s Day from my then-boyfriend: jumper cables. I ripped open the box, thinking there HAD to be something else in there, and the BF yelled at me for damaging the box.

Worst present: Age 14, there was *one* gift for me under the tree and though large, it was engulfed by my younger siblings’ dozens of presents. Mine turned out to be an upright vacuum so I could start helping out around the house more (no allowance, either). I thought it was a joke but no, my dad was clueless too so it was just my hateful mother trying to pawn off more of her own responsibilities one me.

Best present: My husband & I traveled to London for work in our early 20s and while there, made a brass rubbing together at Westminster Abbey – gold crayon on large black construction paper, basically, but gorgeous. Nearly 10 years later, it was still in it’s storage tube and I lamented that we’d never displayed it. That year my hubby, who has never been a fab gift giver, went to great lengths (and expense) and had it matted & framed beautifully with archival glass, etc. It was/is breath-taking and still my favorite thing. And I’d better – I found the receipt and he spent the equivalent of 2/3 of a house note having it so beautifully done!

Worst presents: a box of trainer bras (what were my breasts in training for?) and a stereo that got repossessed because my stepfather decided to ditch my mother two weeks after Christmas and stopped making payments on it.

Best present: finding out I was pregnant with my delightful daughter. She’s just as sarcastic as I am. Good job, Santa.

Worst: When I was 17 my Grandpa and Grandma who I hadn’t seen in years sent me a box containing a box of super plus sized tampons and a bottle of oil control shampoo. No card or anything.

Best: Every year my uncle would give us kids a gift certificate to a music store and I looked forward to them every year. I’ve always been an audiophile but I never had a lot of money. I would get so excited that I made my Dad take me to the music store on Christmas Eve every year to use it.

Best present: Barbie catamaran. We tied a string to it when it snowed three feet. My brother and I opened a window in the basement (above-ground basement), tied a Barbie in and sent it flying. We must have done that fifty times. Also, a small radio/tape player when I was ten. I had that thing forever.

Worst present: Anything from the hubby. He’s bought me nice things many times. But sometimes he buys me things like three dresses, way too small, with sandals. Kept the sandals, sent back the dresses. I think he was role-playing in his mind or something. He always buys clothes too small. He buys me jewelry, but crappy jewelry that I would never wear. I usually just give him catalogs with things circled. I didn’t this year. I think I’m in trouble. He once bought me a slinky nighty. I opened it in front of everyone. This is why we’re in counseling. No boundaries. I bought myself a few things this year just to put under the tree.

Best Childhood Present: the year I got a stereo (record player/dual tapedeck) AND a tv (small black and white). I was probably 12 or 13? We didn’t have much money, and I’m the youngest of three, so I was astonished to get so much. They both came with me to college years later.

Best Adulthood Present: my husband is an awesome gift-giver, so there are many. Two years ago he gave me a new sewing machine and a banjo, and they rule. I had coincidentally also bought a small banjo for our then 3-yr-old daughter, so we got to play banjo duets that Christmas, and I got to play my banjo in concert several times shortly thereafter (ps – I’d never played banjo before, I’m a trained opera singer. I can’t explain our family’s sudden desire for banjos).

Worse Present: an x-boyfriend gave me leather gloves with fur trim, knowing that I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t wear animal products. Then rather than returning them when I said I couldn’t wear them (he said he “forgot” that I don’t wear fur) he gave them to his mom instead. Weirdo.

Strangest Present: a live chicken, given to me while in Kenya. I was told that socially you cannot turn down a gift, even a living gift, so I had to take her. I named her Gloria, and was able to pass her on to some friends with a farm a little outside of Nairobi (I think that customs might have taken issue with me bringing a live chicken back to the states). They’ve assured me that she’s alive and well, and is a good egg producer, but I am dubious. She may have become a meal at some point.

My MiL is crazy and gives even odder gifts, so my “worst” gifts would be pretty much everything she’s given me. One year it was used pencils, another a pack of Kleenex from the dollar store in a shoebox. She keeps trying to give me child-sized eyeglass lanyards. Although I’m fairly certain that these spectacular gifts are trumped by her”just because” gifts – random Halloween-themed Dr Seuss hat made from felt…in spring. Or the laminated cutout of Father Christmas and a wooden shoe. Or the awesome 50yr old readers digest books…
Or maybe it was the gift bag of stuff she gave us when we got engaged. Mybhusband’s brother received a check and a bottle of champagne… We received a HUGE bottle of soy sauce, a stained magazine… And a Costco-sized bottle of lube. As if THAT wasn’t enough, she told us that the lube comes in 2-packs: and she was keeping the second for herself!!!!

The best present… Was the year that we didn’t tell my sister (who had been diagnosed with juvenile-onset type 1 diabetes) that we’d finally been able to afford her a pump thanks to the generosity of a former Miss America. I will NEVER forget the look on her face when she opened the box and saw her ticket to a semblance of freedom and normality.

Years later, I was able to help her afford a replacement while she was in college. She was on the phone with me as she unfolded the Maurader’sMap I’d bought her and found the check. We cried.

Best present ever – a box of fabulous, handmade doll clothes, including a satin ball gown and matching cape that I still cherish. My mother made them for me when I was about 8 years old. Many years later, we were talking about Christmas presents, and I told her how much I’d loved that gift. She teared up a little bit and then told me she’d made them because we really didn’t have any money that year for gifts.

Worst present ever – a white jogging outfit – white knit stretch pants and a white satin jacket with batwing sleeves, and it had brightly colored balloons appliqued onto it. It was so hideous that my daughters made my husband take it back before he ever gave it to me. Of course, they snuck it out to show me before he returned it. We fell on the floor with laughter at the horror that it was, so something good came of even that truly awful gift.

Best present: In order to make up to me for moving me 1100 miles away from my hometown and friends and family, my folks gave me (and my little brother) tickets to go back to our hometown for a week after Christmas. They also bought me a car. A bright blue, jacked up in the back, Plymouth Duster with a 318 V8 engine! (And they bought my brother a dirt bike.)

Worst present: When I was 21, I came home for winter break and looking forward to seeing my mom and my little brother (but not my mom’s soon-to-be new husband). But my mom’s guy had butted in where he wasn’t needed, started a fight with my brother, and my brother left the day before I got there. And that was my last chance to see him because he was gone just a few days before my birthday, less than a month later. I never did warm up to Mom’s guy.

BEST: The newest Sony Walkman when i was 10 years old (20 years ago!). It was soooo cool and I would’ve sold my twin sister to get it. I would sigh dramatically everytime my family and I walked past the electronics store. I would get up and stand in front of the tv, pointing at the screen and making puppy eyes at my mother when an ad for the walkman came on screen (subtle, I know…). No surprise that I got it as a present for Christmas, but man how I squealed and shrieked with delight. First and last time I was ever so obvious and insistent about a gift I wanted for myself, but the joy I felt that Christmas was just something I’ll never forget.

WORST: A call from my cousin on Christmas Day telling me my beloved grandmother had taken ill and had to be hospitalised, less than a day after we had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner together. She was dead 2 weeks later…

My first husband bought me a horrible black metallic chair. Actually I think he bought it for himself. I never sat on it. When we divorced he took it with him. Best present ever my youngest daughter bought me a curtain, one drop , she did not know that they came in ones. I was so touched she used her own pocket money and wanted to buy me something special for my bedroom. That curtain is hanging in my bedroom.

best gift – friend & I exchange odd boxes full of little thoughtful gifts each year… last year, without any discussion or commentary beforehand, we both got larry the cable guy box mixes for each other… (hers as a part of a box of random kitchen tools and kits that are either brilliant or horrifying, mine as a part of a kit to prepare for the mayan apocalypse)

worst gift – one year, in a secret santa exchange – I got a pre-shrink wrapped couscous gift kit thing… there was dust on the shrink wrap and cobwebs in the box of couscous… ew.

Worst Gift: When I was in second grade, my self-obsessed Grandmother bought me a “Barbie” dress. It was a 60s A-line dress with little Barbie graphics all over it–and while I was a skinny little 8 year old, this was a Size 14. I didn’t wear a Size 14 until I was putting on weight after my hysterectomy at age 30! Of course, there were no tags and any suggestion of returning anything would only earn you The Rage Of Bunchie (her nickname; she also didn’t permit anyone to call her Grandmother, etc. You had to call her “Bunchie”. Her name was “Elizabeth”.). I could have fit myself and at least two schoolmates into this dress! And despite my thanking her for this dubious gift, she bitched about me to everyone for MONTHS because I “…never thanked her…” Once someone told me she was doing this, I thanked her again for the dress I could never wear and got a cold stare for my efforts. Evidently I’d ruined her fun to be able to bitch about me.

From then on, she made a point of giving my MOTHER presents but never ME. LOVELY woman; you can imagine I don’t mourn her much.

BEST Gift: The Christmas I was Old Enough To Wear Makeup, I got the FULL SET of Yardley Dollybirds lip glosses, a cool Yardley makeup compact with Union Jacks all over it, and Yardley violet cologne. Colour me a mod little gal! *giggles*

Best gift ever: Penguin Hats. Well, Penguin Hat (singular). My brother gave me a ridiculous cat hat a few years ago, so last year I paid him back with a penguin hat. It is exactly as amazing as you would think being a trapper hat with a stuffed penguin on top.

I don’t come from the gift-givingest family. They would usually just give me a wad of cash and send me on my way. When I was 16, they actually bought me Hanukkah gifts but the gifts made me glad for the cash I’d always gotten–it was all stuff from from the mall sidewalk sale the week
before two sizes too small with the exception of a cool sweater that I wore religiously for the next two winters.

Best Present Ever: When I was 12 or 13, I asked my parents for a boom box for Christmas. When Christmas came, there was a box under the tree that my dad had drawn speakers and a cassette deck on the front of. It had rocks inside and across the top was written the words Boom Box. Needless to say, I was not amused with my parents practical joke. Until they brought out the real gift of a karaoke style boom box. We still laugh about it to this day, 20 years later.

Best: My own copy of a particular book that I had checked out from the library about a zillion times. I was around 10.

Worst: Two are tied for this, both from my quasi-ex-mother-in-law: One was a toilet brush. The other was a bizarre stuffed shih tzu that appeared to be less “toy” than “taxidermy.” I stuck it in a box in a storage shed and forgot all about it. A couple of years later I moved out. I was alone, and by the time I got to the shed it was nearly dark. Nervously hurrying to finish and leave, I opened a mysterious musty box and discovered what I initially mistook to be a long hank of human hair, attached to something lumpy which was about the size of a human head. I nearly pissed myself thinking that I’d stumbled upon the remains of a murder. Then I realized it was that goddamn toy dog.

I have a two-way tie for my worst present ever. The first one was from my paternal grandma. Backstory: she hated me because she hated my mom…fair to do that to a child, hmph. Anywho, she knew I wanted a Cabbage Patch Doll more than anything in the entire world. She had one in it’s package on her bed. She took me into her room and showed it to me, and me being 6 years old, I got excited thinking it was for me. She then told me “do you like it? It’s MINE!” Then I got home made crocheted slippers in a nasty green color from her for Christmas that year.

The second one was from my at-the-time fiance. He gave me a cheap-o hair dryer. Maybe it was a sign that the lasting power of the relationship was relatively short.

From my husband’s step-mother who would put Cinderella’s step-mother to shame in terms of wickedness:

Birthday-An egg sack of praying mantis babies (400 total would have been born should I have let them hatch.) I hate bugs and she knows this.

Birthday-A gift bag with a bag of topsoil in it. Literally a bag of dirt.

Christmas-A gift card loaded with $14.83 which she received after she returned part of a gift I got for her. Basically, my gift to her back.

Christmas-Batteries and a coupon book.

I should also mention these are the wealthiest people I have ever met. Seriously, like multi-millionaires. She’s frighteningly manipulative and always gives these gifts with a sweet backstory to try to hide their truly awful intention.

Worst present: Given to my little sister from the grandparents. Little Mermaid child’s picture book. She was 13.

Best present received: Soom Clozel. I’ve orchestrated large gifts and dolls and things for friends and family, but this time my family saved up and got her for me- their effort and consideration still makes me weepy. So does the note I still have on my desk that says ‘Stop trying to buy the doll, she’s already been bought. ._. Jerk.’

Best present given: Completely redid our upstairs bathroom for one of my roommates while she was out of town. It involved replacing caulking and doing things that nearly killed us and were totally new. There are videos and it was amazing.

Mine is decidedly not nearly as funny as yours. That gun gag–totally best ever. I love it!

I can’t really remember a worst gift. I remember one time as a teen getting bras and underwear from my step-grandmother…but I shut the box very quickly and thanked her anyway. 🙂 I was (still am) so wary of hurting people’s feelings. And hey, I used them.

Best gift ever: This year’s present for my family.
My father passed away in 1999 to the whore that is cancer at the age of 59. He was a musician with my mother back in the day, and by that I mean the 70s. They played in bars, so except for the occasional special street dance (basically a block party for our small town in the south) my siblings and I didn’t get to see them perform.

My mom casually mentioned this year that she had a reel-to-reel audio recording of them playing some gigs. I was shocked I had no idea about this, and I know my siblings didn’t either. I had a friend who recently posted about converting *his* fathers’ reels to digital, so I pounced on him to help me. We got 50 songs of my dad and mom performing in a band called “The Country Rustics” from 1975 (!) doing old school country and guitar music, and my dad talks quite a bit. Haven’t heard him speak since ’99, so this was obviously very emotional. One of my favorite lines is “We’re gonna put some bluegrass on you, so kick up your heels and raise some hell” before busting in to “Rolling in my sweet baby’s arms.” CLASSIC.

I made CDs of all of the music, complete with a CD cover with a photo of them, AT THE BAR they played it at. They were a house band for a few years there. I’ve only told 1 sibling who is a musician because I HAD to share it with someone, but other than that, it will be a surprise. Couple that with the fact that almost all of us siblings (6 of us) are traveling out of state to have our christmas with our uncle and aunt (dad’s siblings) because they can’t travel, and I just can’t wait to see what happens. The best gift, like you said, is the laughter, and the look on their faces. I can’t wait. The party is Saturday!

Best present ever: Turning around the worst Christmas ever.
When I was 10, my father was battling a brain tumor. Somewhere that year his brother died, and his mother, and her poodle too. Worst Christmas ever. My mother’s elderly mother died in early December, when my father was so sick that Mom skipped Nana’s funeral — and he died that day.
Understandably she didn’t want anything to do with Christmas. So my father’s father and my brother & sister got together to give me one. Poppy brought me Nonie’s artificial Christmas tree and we set it up together. (Apparently he’d never helped her put it up because I learned some new words that day!) My brother & sister showed up with a _HUMONGOUS_ bag of kid toys for me….nothing expensive just lots of little things to play with. A slinky, some playdough, that goopy stuff that lifts pictures off comics. And best of all, Slime, which I’d begged for but my mother thought was so gross she wouldn’t get it. That day? She let me keep it and play with it until it dried out. And come to think of it that might have been where I got my pingpong ball gun too.

Worst Christmas present ever was an ongoing family tradition…we wrap up things that were on the regular shopping list and put them in the stocking. Like Mom would give Dad AlkaSeltzer, or I’d get a pack of toothbrushes. It can be fun…unfortunately my husband doesn’t like it, and thank goodness I talked to him before I did it!!

One of the best presents ever: a swing set when I was 7; I’m sure my parents would argue it was one of the worst presents when I broke my arm on their wedding anniversary the following February, though.

One of the worst presents ever: a set of coat hangers from QVC. Granted they are handy, but really??

My grandma got me a dead bat. It was ludicrous and wondrous all wrapped into a tiny, furry, dead creature of the night. I still have it 18 years later. I guess it’s both the best and the worst gift ever.

Best: a very used 1968 Volkswagon bug I got for Christmas the year I turned 16….LOVED that car, had so much fun.

Worst: a 12 inch round ceramic zodiac symbol disk thing my dad picked up at a roadside mexican import place in south Texas. I can remember dad telling me that I had such a great surprise coming for Christmas, and that he was sure I was the only kid to be getting one…he REALLY built this thing up. I wondered why my mom would just shake her head whenever he mentioned it…..I knew why as soon as I opened it, it was awful.

Worst present ever: Dollar store coloring books. When I was 14. And I didn’t even get crayons.

My husband always says his worst present ever was a laundry basket as a teenager. Apparently some relative out there assumed that teenage boys don’t do their own laundry, and by God, they should…

Best present ever: House paint! The first house we bought was this tiny, broken thing that J and I absolutely loved. We bought it on December 23rd, and our families chipped in for some massive hardware store gift-cards, so immediately after Christmas, we bought $300 of paint, and painted the whole thing!

Worst: The year I was pregnant with my son. I was, like, a million days overdue and still hosting the family Christmas Eve get-together. I was giant, desperate to stop being pregnant (it took the wee beastly creature until the 28th to actually emerge), and swollen and achy EVERYWHERE. And my mother-in-law gave me an exercise book entitled, “Thinner Thighs in 30 Days.”

Now in her defense, she expected that I would no longer *be* pregnant by this time, and typically I was very into working out when I was *not* pregnant. And once she realized how it came across she was scandalized. But it remains my favorite funny “worst present” story forever and ever.

Best: The time I accidentally convinced my daughter (I think she was 2 at the time?) that it’s traditional to wheel Santa into the mall in a cage so all the children can poke him with sharp sticks. I *thought* she’d know I was being facetious. But she was not as quick on the uptake as I thought she was, and more than once I had to shoo her away from other children whom she was trying to share the story with.

Best – my first iPod from my husband when our daughter was a baby. The Internet is in my HAND.

Worst – a kitchen wall clock and Lady Stetson gift set from my first “real boyfriend”. He didn’t even wrap them. Just handed them to me…”Here” is all he said. That was the first red flag of our this-is-just-not-meant-to-be relationship.

Best presents; I’m probably supposed to say my engagement ring, but really the best present I think I ever got was a bunch of painted sticks. Yes, painted sticks! I have crocheted for most of my life. One year I really got into making stuffed animals. Anyone who has done this can tell you that getting the stuffing into all small spaces can be a total whore. So, my husband bought an assortment of dowel rods, smoothed down the ends, and painted them different colors. I love my ‘stuffing rammers’!

Worst presents; When I was about six, my parents gave me two beautiful Angora rabbits, I loved them soooo much. For about a half an hour, until the allergic reaction set in. It was a doozy too! Like, e room, steroid shots, giant antihistamines, the whole nine. Beautiful bunnies given to a little girl down the way who wouldn’t be killed by them, professional carpet and furniture cleaning everywhere they had been in case there would have been a single hair left, it was awful! Fast forward ten years. My father was SUPER proud of himself, he had picked out my present all by himself, with absolutely no help from any female relative! And it was gorgeous! It was the prettiest, softest, most flattering sweater ever made. Woven together by the hands of angels, from gossamer threads of, wait for it, Angora! Repeat hospital/ professional cleaning procedure.

Best/worst: my uncle is kind of a practical joker. One year he gave me this fancy velvet jewelry box, and I’m thinking, whoa, something really special in there, right? Open the box and it’s a very realistic looking giant rubber cockroach. On a safety pin. He said that made it a “broach.” (*groan*)

But it actually turned out to be a really awesome way to scare the shit out of people. I had long hair, so I’d pin the “broach” to the shoulder of my sweater, and then at some point in the evening flip my hair back and make people scream when they thought I had an actual giant cockroach on my shoulder. (My sister also had long hair & we’d take turns doing this. Never got old.)

Another best/worst: my now ex-husband bought me a treadmill for my birthday. Which I had asked for – I was pregnant with our 2nd child & I knew I’d never be able to get out of the house to go to the gym once I had 2 kids. But I was thinking, you know, a used treadmill for $100 on craigslist or something? He bought me a gym-quality treadmill for like $2,000. But he put it on a line of credit in my name, because I had better credit than him. And then he left me 8 months later. So, happy birthday to me, I bought myself a really fucking expensive treadmill. Silver lining: I run on that thing almost every day.

Worst a gift certificate for One Night at a B &B in Napa Vally. You can only get a one night reservation from Monday through Thursday… or buy a second night for a weekend trip. It was pricy so I had to take a vacation day to sleep somewhere way to fancy for me.

Best: Wasn’t one I received, but one I gave. We announced our first pregnancy to everyone on Christmas eve. Everyone got bibs (I love my aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa) and baby bottles and our mothers got ultrasound pictures.

Worst: Shoes. The guy I had been dating for 5 years was very excited about a gift that was under the tree for me. It was a big box, but I thought maybe he was trying to throw me off. I was expecting a ring, I got shoes. We broke up 4 months later. I hated the shoes.

Best present: probably a few days ago when I was depressed about not being able to go to a movie cause the roads were iced over so my Mom gave me the movie Star Trek: Into Darkness that she got me for Christmas early. I promptly forced her two watch both movies with me back-to-back and it was glorious. Surprise presents are always the best presents.

Worst present: I can’t tell you a specific time but pretty much whenever my extended family’s brains would go ‘girl= girly’ and get me completely useless things that I have no use for at Christmas and do it for YEARS past when the sparkly kid’s body glitter and shitty palette of waxy lipstick should be acceptable.

Best Gift: My mother had a party in the summer and I took off all my rings and placed them in the safe spot that I always used when I was there and my hands were all swollen and puffy. Later on I went to retrieve the rings, including a .50 carat diamond in an antique setting and a platinum/sapphire one. They were missing. We looked everywhere, in the lawn, around the kitchen, at the bottom of the pool and even in the bottom of the trash hopper and through all the bags of garbage. NO RINGS. Months later my parents gave me a small box and inside, my rings. I bawled like a baby. They had asked every guest to check their bags…. and sure enough one of them had them in their bag. I want to believe that they grabbed the rings on accident but we’ll never know.

The Worst Gift: I can’t think of one, for myself but one year my husbands mother gave him 2 sweatshirts with raccoons on them. I had just meant his family for the first time and I thought WTF to myself. Then his sister said it out loud. We all laughed and laughed. Those shirts still make me smile every time I think of them.

Best Present Ever: Last year, Hallmark released the Heat Meiser and Snow Meiser ornaments (from my favorite Christmas movie, The Year Without a Santa Clause). My husband got them for me, which is in itself wonderful. But he knew this was the only thing I wanted for Christmas and when he went to buy them, they were sold out. Rather than throwing in the towel after checking every Hallmark in America, he hunted them down for me. That’s part of what makes it the best. He knew that something so little would make me so happy.

Worst Present Ever: A roll of paper. Yes. For Christmas, my father gave me a large roll of recycled craft paper – the kind that when you use markers, they bleed all over the paper because being kind to the environment makes for crappy drawings. That was it. What makes this the worst was that it was actually the best present of the bunch from my father that year.

My mother had gone shopping and put all of this stuff on layaway. She picked up the layaway for my sisters, but somehow, forgot to pick up mine. There I was on Christmas morning, holding my Christmas belt, watching my sisters tear through packages. My mom said, “Why aren’t you opening your presents?”

My poor well meaning dad bought me a sweater that caused me to actually started crying when I opened it. I was about 14 and asked for clothes for Christmas. I was envisioning a gift certificate to Wet Seal you know? This was around 1987. The sweater was like the equivalent of Holly Hobby or something, this nerdy, innocent, little girl type of sweater that i wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. I never imagined that my dad would actually try to buy my clothes for me! So I ended up using the sweater by wrapping it around my bedpost so it wouldn’t bang against the wall when I was having teenage sex.
Worst present ever!

I thought of a few others. At work a few years back, my coworkers played that stupid white elephant game. You were supposed to buy a gift worth $20. I usually err on the side of caution and buy something even nicer than $20. The first year I played that retarded game, i ended up with a “gift” from the old bag (Janet) I hate in my office, it was a package of pumpkin bread mix. The next year I ended up with two plant pots complete with plant bulbs, the final time I played was the worst, I ended up with a crappy DustBuster type of hand vacuum. Never again. Fucking idiot cheapskates!

Best present ever: A trip to Hawaii.
Worst present ever: Shockingly similar… A pink sweater set with baby pearl buttons when I had seven clashing hair colors (all competing for attention), wore eyeliner in the style of a Zoro mask and gray eyeshadow as lipstick.

Was this a trend in the 90’s? The pink sweater presents… Not my uncoordinated clown look. I KNOW that wasn’t a trend.

Best Present: This may sound lame to some but my sister got me this amazingly soft long bathrobe from b&bw a few years back and it’s one of the few Christmas presents that I still use almost every day.
Worst: When I was younger my brother and I were watching TV at my Granny’s house. A commercial for this peeing doll came on and I was disgusted. My Granny walked in and my brother told her that’s what I wanted for Christmas. So yeah, pee doll for me while he did his evil grin in the background.

“These black and white, custom taxidermy pieces, made by Etsy user TheCurious13, make up what might be the most creative chess set ever. Rachael Garcia, 31, spoke to HuffPost Weird about her full set of real (dead) mice, adorned in armor and royal garb.”

When I was a sophomore in college I wanted to get my dad a really nice leatherbound copy of _Dracula_ for Christmas because he had been geeking out over it since before Coppola’s movie. (I’ve always thought my dad was a really cool guy.) Now, my parents were newly divorced and my dad harbored some serious anger toward my mom, though he always tried his best to keep it under wraps. I could still tell; he was just that angry with her. This being before the Internet was really a thing, a few months before Christmas I asked my mom to keep an eye out for one but I didn’t mention to her that it was for my dad, since I wasn’t sure how she was feeling about him; they had only been divorced for about a year at that point! Christmas Day came and went and I got dad something else because no nice leatherbound book had come across my radar. When I visited my mom, however, guess what my gift was? Yup, a really nice leatherbound copy of _Dracula_ — that I knew cost $100 because the price was written in pencil on the inside flap. (I don’t think my mom saw it — she’s not the kind of person to leave a pricetag on a gift!) So there I was, with this book that was gorgeous and expensive and I just felt horribly guilty. My parents were both so. very. broke. after the divorce, I knew this was a lot of money for her to spend on me for Christmas. And I knew I couldn’t just turn around and give it to my dad because 1) if he ever found out where it came from, he’d probably set it on fire and 2) it would break my mom’s heart that I gave it away because she had that near-tears “I found the perfect thing for you!” look shining in her eyes when she put the carefully-wrapped parcel in my hands.

Clearly the only thing I could do was keep my mouth shut and read the book (which I hadn’t yet – BAD GOTH!) so that I could honestly say “yes” when my mom asked me about it later.

The icing on this cake is that I found the book to be awful — slow and filled with treacle-y language even AFTER giving it a contextual time period pass. Then I had to smile and tell my mom that I loved it; I had to face my dad and not be overcome by the urge to shout, “Your taste in literature is seriously questionable! How am I related to you?!?”

The book is still on my shelf. Waiting. It’s been long enough I can probably regift it without hurting my mom’s feelings, but I just have to find the right person.

Worst present? A Starsky and Hutch T-shirt from my great grandmother, who got it for me because I asked for a Star Wars shirt. I actually cried when I opened the package. In my defense, I was seven.
Best? Either my corgi (from my mom) or my funky jadeite spoon (from my boyfriend).

Best ever: An Arabian horse named Peregrine. Whenever I would have a nightmare, I would sneak out to his stall with my blanket and curl up with him. We had so many adventures together.

Worst ever: My ex-wife getting me a sling shot with metal shot to kill the squirrels (that I loved to watch playing) in our back yard. She was obsessed about them stealing ‘her’ pecans. I told her I wanted ‘something shiny’ for Christmas that year, hoping for jewelry. Turns out the metal shot was quite shiny.

OH wow, I don’t even remember any really bad gifts. Since adulthood, gifts haven’t really been a thing anymore. So maybe the worst gift is nothing? Actually, while I feel bad that my parents aren’t doing well financially, I wish they’d give us nothing, instead of sending a used fanny pack obviously found in a closet somewhere.

Best is usually good chocolate or maybe that time I got the sega game gear at my grandparents house. It was my first video game I didn’t have to borrow!

Worst gift ever – used kitchen utensils as a wedding present. Best gift ever – used kitchen utensils as a wedding present…there were actually some incredibly wonderful items in that gift, like a seriously old-fashioned, heavy as a sackload of bricks, juicer that is still amazing…they just don’t make em like that anymore…of course, there were also used wooden spoons with food bits stuck to them…:(

A glamour girl cruise ship when I was about 10. It was the most beautiful expensive thing I had ever seen and in my mind, still is. But what made it the best gift I have ever and will ever receive, the look of pride and joy on my Korean War Veteran Grandpa’s face at my over the moon reaction on a silly girl’s toy cruise ship. He was the greatest man I’ve ever known. And in his final days…that ship was clearly one of his favorite memories as well because he asked me 20 years after the fact if I still had it.

The worst gift? would be the Christmas my ex-mother-n-laws only gift to me was a joint gift for my husband and I and it was jeans for him. Of course the next year I got dish towel from her. Yeah.

when I was 16 I received a pink sweatshirt with a penquin eating an ice cream cone on the front of it, the sleeves rolled up to expose matching ice cream cones and the topper, I’m a redhead. my crazy aunt thought it was awesome when she gave it to me. Best gift? probably the barbie dream house. I’m 42 now and I still remember it.

Best present ever: a remote control Cousin It “robot”. It had long white hair, sunglasses and a top hat and my son and I sent that crazy thing all over the house, delivering things to each other, having it meet people at the door, you name it. It was a blast. It’s here (the quality of the video gets better): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gioFO14xdpI#t=66

Worst present ever: religious themed things. I’m pagan. I do Solstice. And I promise I won’t give you tiny besoms or whatever if you aren’t on the pagan path.

Worst Present: When I was fairly young, my brother and I both got really good grades one year, and we got presents for them. I DESPERATELY wanted a volleyball, or some type of ball to play with. My brother got a kickball, and I got… a ceramic music box shaped like a clown. Which was then put on a shelf, and I was not allowed to touch, because it was fragile.

While this was a horrible horrible present, it was MUCH worse in that it was ‘the start of my collection.’ So even though I was a KID, and wanted TOYS, every holiday I got more freaking music boxes, which I was not allowed to touch, and when I was older I had to dust, and I HATED. All the toys I missed out on, for stupid music boxes I never wanted in the first place. When I moved out I did not take them with me, there are probably about 100 of them. I never wanted ANY of them.

I tend to get notoriously bad gifts. I am a vegetarian, and have gotten leather coats, jewelry made of BONES, and cans of SPAM (it is so funny, ha ha ha -_-). Clothes in way to small sizes, workout stuff I don’t want, just shit. And my dad, in the years before the divorce, got all the kids (15 year age spans) the exact same stuff — but horrible stuff, like big plastic puppets, noisemaking toys, and just garbage like that. I could write for an hour about horrible things people have gotten me.

Oh, and after admitting I had an alcohol problem, I got 4 bottles of wine and a bottle of vodka for Christmas. What part of – I cannot drink anymore ever again, is so hard for YOU?

I have gotten so many terrible gifts, I actually refuse gifts now, and no people don’t get me things, which is MUCH better. And the stuff that I do end up with almost always I just get rid of.

Best Present: Probably a hamster for Christmas.

No presents is the better option for me. And I am not even that picky, just what are people THINKING sometimes?

Worst present:
Nylon underwear in gaudy colours . They all said something different. One had a pair of open lips (with a hole) and said “Mmmmmm”. The other had a basketball hoop (open hoop) and said “In and Out”. They were from our cook and I was a shy 18 year old and opened them in front of my father and stepmother.
Best Present: Pair of sapphire earrings from a boyfriend. (tiny tiny sapphires)

Best present ever is a tough one, because my parents have always been stars at Christmas shopping. If we’re talking super-useful things, then it would be my IKEA duvet. If we’re talking just all-around fun, the fifth season of Doctor Who. That is significant to me because, after Tennant, Doctor Who got picked up by another channel in Canada and we missed the whole fifth season broadcast. (We did eventually see the last of the Tennant specials, though – I borrowed them from the library. Yay libraries!)

Worst present… tough again, because my grandparents have always been shitty about presents. I was the girl who got clothes two sizes too small (shameless Grinch reference), because my grandparents DID NOT BELIEVE that I took a different size from Favourite Granddaughter. The worst instance of this was a pair of floral-print pants (either heavyweight cotton or denim) that I couldn’t even zip up, and my grandfather actually suggested that I wear them awhile to break them in. What a dick.

And then there was the book of Bible stories that they gave to my brother and me. I’m agnostic. My mom’s Buddhist. My dad’s an atheist. What the crap.

Oh! I already posted, but just remembered the year I got a bike! My mum had ordered it from a catalogue, and my dad had assembled it late Christmas Eve after one too many eggnogs. The handlebars were on backwards until waaay after Easter.

Best present ever: hard to choose, but I’ll probably say riding lessons when I was in 5th grade.

Worst present ever: When I was growing up, we used to do Christmas dinner and gift exchange with some neighbors, whose son was my older brother’s best friend. I was a shy little girl, a few years younger than the boys, and every year these people would do their best to utterly humiliate me. One year they gave me panties and made me show them to everyone, and I was mortified. One year they gave me a can of peas, because they knew how much I hated peas and every year for Christmas dinner it became a sport to them to try to force me to have to eat them.

I get anxious about presents because I’m afraid I’m not going to like it. Worst might have been the time I told my parents I wanted a paint set, but not oil and not paint-by-numbers and I unopened an oil paint-by-numbers kit.

Worst: back in the days when I did canning I would give away jars of pickles, tomato sauce, etc. One year as a Christmas gift my sister gave me a larged wrapped box, in it were all the canning jars I had given to her. Mind you, she gave me back EMPTY canning jars! and that was all she gave to me that year. talk about scrooge. I guess I should be happy they were clean.

Best: the year my husband gave me my diamond ring. that was a wonderful surprise.

Best present: I actually didn’t get it for Christmas, but Mother’s Day — my husband gave me the iPod I’d been yearning for.

Worst present: It’s a toss-up between the red plastic purse from a garage sale that my aunt gave me the year I was 16, or the padded clothes hangers my then-boyfriend gave me. Whoopde-doo. Or maybe it was the large, mysteriously flat container that was under the tree from my parents my last Christmas at home, which I figured was something spectacular, or at least some nice artwork to decorate my soon-to-be-moved-into apartment. It turned out to be a wooden cutting board. Thrillsville.

Your whimsy always makes me smile 🙂 Oh, and sorry about the estrangement. Blah. You are a good cat owner.

Best: A trip to Disney World. It was a fun surprise as a child
Worst: Capri Sun juice boxes… given to me from my Aunt & Uncle who had recently won the lotto. As in $20 million dollar winners. It was later said that, “Oh, there was supposed to be more in there!” But they seriously though Capri Sun was a suitable gift to give. Weirdest people I know.

Best Present: Well, it wasn’t so much the present as the delivery. My close friend and former roommate went home to PA for Christmas so we exchanged our gifts before she left. I woke up Christmas morning alone, with no gifts to open and a serious case of homesick blues. I went to work (where we both worked) and one of the managers gave me a card from Tami that read “when you get home, check the trunk of my car.” Inside the truck were a whole slew of stocking stuffers and a team jersey that I wanted all individually wrapped.

Worst Present: My boyfriend of two years bought me a bouquet of flowers from the grocery store…on Christmas morning…because he forgot to buy a gift for the woman he was dating for two years!!!!

Best and worst are actually one and the same… I got a diva cup from my sister. I was mortified and disappointed, I mean how lame is that? A glorified tampon for Christmas? And then I started using it: BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER!!!!

Worst present ever: Christmas 1999 – a gigantic can (from a wholesale club – so freaking huge) of Nacho Cheese and bag of chips from my mom. My husband and I deemed it the Y2K cheese – clearly she thought stores would shut down 1/1/00 and we’d starve.

Best: diamond earrings from my husband, they were a total surprise and I love them.

Worst present: probably my bf’s mom’s giftbag to us. She packed it a while before so she didn’t remember what was in it, and when we pulled it out it was a puke yellow checkered apron, ugly as heck tea towels, and a random cotton flag-like thing that depicted architecture styles of Bermuda from the 70s, complete with a stain. When my bf called and jokingly asked for an explanation, especially of the Bermuda rag, I could hear her laughing from where I was at the other end of the room. She’d never been to Bermuda. She didn’t remember wrapping the gifts, and they’d just been things she’d been unable to give away to her Church for their fundraiser. It was the worst and simultaneously most hilarious gift I think I’ve ever received.

Best present: I don’t even know, I just keep thinking about Bermuda LOL

EVERY SINGLE PERSON that has commented here will have to explain to my work why I’ve done NOTHING today but read these comments. This is some of the best entertainment I’ve had in a long time. And some of y’all’s families are fucked up.

Best present: tie between Barbie Folding Fun House or an American Girl doll.

WORST: N’Sync Christmas CD when I was about 17 and I had to pretend to like it while sitting next to a guy I had a crush on. He turned to me and said “do you like N’Sync?” My Uncle who gave it to me could hear so I had to be like “yes…yes I do….” I was really a Back Street Boys fan anyways.

It’s funny that I can’t think of a best or worst in this category. We’re getting older now and we (Dear Husband and I) just go buy something when we want it and can afford it, whether it is Christmas or not. Best Christmas gifts might be those we can regift. Yes, I guess we’re cheap and I don’t like to shop. I put together gift baskets mostly of food and other consumables, with a few small trinkets (Christmas ornaments, candles, books, gloves, outlandish socks, gift cards) thrown in. We love spending time with friends over dinner, catching up by Skype, emailing. Don’t want anything else. Don’t know what our loved ones want that we can afford (full tuition through grad school is a bit more than we want to spend this year). Want them to know we are thinking of them, but hope they don’t consider our gifts their worst. How can anyone consider a gift “worst”? We’re not entitled, and the trash can can always be filled without guilt. What we can’t do is not send a thank-you note for the gift.

Worst Gift: postage stamps, so I would write home more often. I get the intention here, but a gift that gives me an obligation or task really isn’t a gift, is it?

Best GIft: My first engagement ring. It was a CZ, 5-carat, too big, tacky as all get out ring from my partner who is too practical to spend a lot of money but wanted to surprise me and knew I’d want to pick out my “real” ring. I love that thing, even if I can’t wear it without looking like I am going to a costume party.

Back in the 80s. Parents told my brother and I that instead of getting a bunch of little gifts, we were each getting one big gift each. They went all out. Made up envelopes w/scavenger hunt clues and had us searching the house top-to-bottom. We finally find them and brother opens his first. It was an Atari! With a bunch of new games including Pitfall and Kaboom. Wow! How was my gift going to even come close to the awesomeness of his?? I was so excited tearing off the wrapping paper, parents looking on looking so proud of themselves. What could it be?…What awesomeness was under that wrap?? A typewriter. I thought it had to be a joke. Nope. They thought I would be glad to have it for school. He gets an Atari and I get a typewriter. I know it was so ungrateful of me, but I couldn’t even pretend to be happy about this. The unfairness of it all. As you can see, 25 years later, still annoys me. 🙂

Best: My younger sister bought me a stuffed toy in the shape of a river trout. It was detailed and anatomically correct and I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but it provided hours of entertainment and I really came to treasure it.

Worst: My stepmother asked what I wanted for Christmas and I said I wanted up-to-date photos of all my sisters. They’re all much younger than I am, and I didn’t have any pictures of them as they were getting older and growing up. Christmas morning, I got two empty picture albums. The photos never materialized.

Best gift: I moved out of my parent’s house when I was 27. After living without internet for a year because I was too dirt poor to afford that luxury, my parent’s suprised me with a years worth of service. I was so overwhelmed that I totally cried.

Worst gift: When I was a freshman in college (2003), my Grandma got me a glass paperweight in the shape of a sparrow. She said I would get a lot of use out of it on my desk in my dorm room, ya know, to hold down all the papers my laptop contained…

I forgot about the time my stepmother’s sister came over before Christmas and gave matching hand-decorated pillow cases to her daughters and my half-sister, and a beautiful, hand-made hooded cloak to my drama geek stepsister, then handed me a blanket in its original plastic packaging (not wrapped) with a $10 bill stuffed in there for good measure. It was one of those scratchy ones with satin edging you put between your sheets and a comforter, not even a pretty one you’d put out in your living room.

I had forgotten! Worst gift ever was when my mother gave my husband and I parenting books. For my birthday. We already had 3 children. She said that she had “concerns” about how we talk to the kids when they’re in trouble and these books would help us avoid “negative” terms like grounding, stop, shouldn’t, and no.
Happy Birthday, you’re a bad parent.
If you knew what kind of parent she was to me, you’d be rolling your eyes too.

Worst …..my step dad’s grandmother drew my name for Secret Santa. She told the entire family that she got me a Garfield vibrator. So everyone was DYING to watch me open it. It was a battery operated back massager in the shape of Garfield. Just thinking about her thinking it was a vibrator made me regift it to my sister in law!!

The worst present was from my husband’s best friend’s wife (who I loathed -couldn’t stand the best friend either). I had previously told my husband that I really wanted the “Braveheart” movie and he said that his best friend and spouse would be getting this for me. Yay! What did I get? A cook book on low-fat cooking – definitely a dig from the skinny biatch, who would make more than one comment either about my weight or her lack of it during our “friendship” – and a framed picture of the four of us from a wedding we’d attended together. Seriously? You actually think I want a picture of your bitchy mug on display? I kept the frame and chucked the cook book and photo.

The best present was one Christmas when it was just me and my mom. My dad was away on a trip (worked for Pan American Airlines) and my brother had flunked a bunch of finals and blew money was that was supposed to last for most of the year, so my parents refused to fly him home from college for the holiday. So, mom and I went to a Chinese restaurant for Christmas dinner (sadly, no bad caroling or a peking duck with the head still on) where we both had huge poo poo platters. Then we went to NYC to the Metropolitan Opera to see Engleburt Humperdink’s “Hansel & Gretel”. As the overture started playing, I realized this was the same music I had on an album when I was a little kid. Hadn’t heard it since I was about 7. Plus, the witch was played by a man and was hilarious. We had a blast.

To read this, you need to bear in mind that this occurred in China, and that unfortunately, some stereotypes are very, very true.

The very first Christmas I ever celebrated was when I was 8. My parents and I went to a gathering of their friends and all of their kids. We had a great meal, and us kids had lots of fun exploring the apartment, which was all sorts of awesome. Afterwards, we were given our “stocking stuffers.” We were each given about a handful of things like pens, coloured paper, and white-out. Educational stuff. That was fine, since we were all conditioned to think those things were kind of neat (we had lots of fun with the strip white-out one of the girls received).

When it came time to open up our real present (yes, we each only had one gift), we went one child at a time. By the time it got to me, others had received stuff like a set of fairytale stories, amusement park tickets, dolls and fancy new clothes. I was pretty excited, since mine came in the biggest package of them all. It was some 10*15 inches at the bottom, and about 10 inches tall. I opened it, and found myself both horrified and frankly, kind of resigned.

It was a set of five grammar books. In hard cover.

Astonished, I turned to my parents and said, “Seriously? You know there’s nothing I hate more than grammar, right? Even history books would have been better.” So when my 9th birthday came a few months later, my parents proudly gave me another huge package. It contained a humongous, three volume saga detailing 5000 years worth of Chinese history.

As for me, my parents were kind enough that they only nagged me about making use of my grammar books for half a year, but I still swore off Christmas for three years after that. Once my family moved to Canada, my parents finally braved buying me another Christmas present: a giant stuffed bear. It was also the last Christmas gift I ever received from my parents (apparently they think Christmas has an age limit). I never named it (whimsy was indoctrinated out of me a long time ago), but it still sits on my bed to this day.

Best Present Ever: Gift cards for books. Why more people won’t give me these and nothing else…

Worst Present Ever: My estranged grandma’s artsy ram statue that was given after much buildup of being the best present ever. It was anatomically correct. As in two bulging testicles hangin’ freely off its back end. Given how much laughter this statue has caused, maybe it’s better than I thought.

Best Present- So many to choose from, the hamster when I was seven, my kitchen aid mixer from last year, the year I got nothing but gift cards to bookstores. I’m very lucky that I’ve had way more good christmases than bad.

The worst- my cat ran away and my dad died Christmas eve when I was 16. Pretty much the worst gift ever and you can’t return that one. Also my aunt always makes candies like toffee and caramels for christmas for everyone but never gives real gifts. The candies aren’t good either. Then she expects really awesome gifts from everyone else and is upset when she doesn’t get them. Family is so much fun.

Weirdest christmas gift as an adult. HAD to be the water purifier that was 20 years old, still in his box and never used. Was a gift from my husbands friend of hs family, known to be a hoarder and just gave gifts that he found around the house! BUT yet he managed to buy catnip in a pretty xtree pot for our cats and sends THEM a christmas card each year, never address to us just the two cats..LOL We at least find that funny.
He has also given us fossils, five year old cookies, wine scented candles(we dont drink), seashell candle holder that doesnt sit flat and shrimp dip(no crackers to eat it with).

A couple of years ago, we went out with my dad, stepmom and sister to see a movie on Christmas Eve. Before the movie started, we had an hour to kill, and my dad was struck with inspiration. My stepgrandmother had been calling and complaining for days about a dead deer that was hit in front of her house and laying in the ditch. Her house was just minutes from the theater, so, without asking, my dad drives us down there and then he gets my husband, sister, stepmom and himself ( I was wearing a dress coat and deemed “too dressed up” to participate) to drag the dead deer carcass across her yard and way around the back of her property, probably at least a quarter mile. Ah, memories!

Worst Presents Ever… Nativity Wind chime. The manger was on top with Mary, Joseph, Jesus, shepherds and wisemen hanging down below banging into one another. I was 14. At age 11 I was convinced that I was getting a Dear Diary, remember how fucking cool those were… I don’t, I got an electronic dictionary intend.

Thank you thank you thank you for posting this. My husband and I saw these guns on a episode of Bones a couple weeks ago and immediately knew that we must have one (for the cats) and then decided that it was stuff like this that makes us feel like we’re not adults yet. But then I thought fuck it (in a Christmas way) and decided I would make sure I got one to put in my husband’s really big mitten (my mom made it for him after they had a conversation about her annual holiday crafts attempts, including boiled wool stockings and very tiny mittens and I was making fun of them but he thought they were “wonderful” and asked her to make him a huge, boiled wool mitten) so I have been searching for a month for these guns but I couldn’t find them anywhere because I didn’t know the name and “AK47 or nerf cat toys” was getting me nowhere at the toy stores.

Best present ever: a helicopter flying lesson.
Worst present ever: reminds me of yours, actually. a high school boyfriend bought me a pair of black jeans that turned my legs black. when i returned them, i learned that he had paid about $8 for them.